African Officials Draft Plan to Fight AIDS

African ministers agreed on a draft declaration Wednesday calling on their countries to import and produce their own generic AIDS drugs and to boost spending dramatically on AIDS programs to fight the pandemic.

African heads of state are expected to sign the document today at the start of a two-day pan-African summit on AIDS, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Governments will then be asked to ratify the agreement in their respective legislative chambers.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a speech prepared for today’s summit, calls for a “war chest” of $7 billion to $10 billion annually to wage an effective campaign against AIDS. Spending on AIDS in developing countries now totals about $1 billion annually.

Annan also proposed creation of a Global Fund dedicated to the battle against AIDS and other infectious diseases, as well as huge increases in funding for AIDS education campaigns, HIV testing, condoms, HIV drugs, scientific research and improved health care.

Annan outlined five goals--preventing further spread of the epidemic, reducing HIV transmissions from mother to child, ensuring that care and treatment are within reach of all, delivering scientific breakthroughs and protecting those most vulnerable from the epidemic.

Africa’s leaders must also take the lead “in breaking the wall of silence and embarrassment that still surrounds this issue in too many African societies, and in removing the abuse, discrimination and stigma that still attach to those infected,” Annan said in the prepared text.