Panel of AIDS Activists Says African Epedemic Needs Attention

The African AIDS epidemic will spiral out of control if afflicted countries and the U.S. do not devote significantly more resources to the problem, a group of AIDS activists told a crowd of several hundred at the ARCO forum last night.

The panelists, who included filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the executive director of the Harvard AIDS Institute and the Rev. Eugene Rivers III, spoke for nearly two hours on "The Crisis of AIDS in Africa."

The event began with a screening of Kennedy's Epidemic Africa, a 10-minute video commissioned by President Clinton's Mission on Children Orphaned by AIDS in Africa.

With images of hand-painted coffin advertisements and school children singing in a chorus about losing parents to AIDS, the video presented a series of statistics on the extent to which AIDS has ravaged the African continent.

5,500 AIDS-related funerals occur in Africa every day, the video said, and by the year 2010, 95 percent of children orphaned by AIDS will be living in Africa.

"One of the growth industries [in Africa] is the coffin business," said panelist Bill Harris, a member of the President's mission. "There are now environmental issues because of the free cutting of timber to make coffins."

Panelists said the main impetus for change must come from within African countries, but that it is crucial that the U.S. contribute resources to the effort.

"The agenda has to be determined by the African countries," said Dr. Richard Marlink, executive director of the Harvard AIDS Institute. "It must not come from an outside agenda."

But he said America must make finding an AIDS vaccine a national priority.

"A structure on the order of NASA must be put in place in order to effectively address the problem," he said.

According to Rivers, the U.S. spent more than $1 billion in the war on drugs in Columbia, but has only devoted $150 million to the African AIDS crisis. He said the discussion needs to be elevated above a "liberal, feel-good analysis."

"If we're going to have more than a tearful, mystical experience we need to have a real nuts-and-bolts discussion," Rivers said.

He added that the black faith community in the U.S. needs to make the issue one of its central priorities.

"The black faith community must not let any organization duck and dodge the issues," he said.

Panel members offered additional suggestions for countering the epidemic.

Dr. Debrework Zewide, the World Bank's global coordinator for HIV/AIDS, said African governments must create "an enabling environment" where citizens can openly confront the issue.

One country that has created such an environment, Zewide said, is Kenya--a nation where religious groups once burned condoms in the streets. Now, she said the country's government is beginning to acknowledge that it is important for its citizens to have access to contraceptives.

If the epidemic is not controlled soon, Marlink said, any advances that had been made in life expectancy on the African continent will soon be erased.

He said the diagnosed AIDS rate among pregnant women in Botswana has increased from five percent to 40 percent in just two years.

"All advances in life expectancy in Africa are being wiped out this year and next year," he claimed.

Marlink also asked audience members to glance at the people in their row.

"[In Africa] one out of every four or five would have AIDS," he said.

The event was sponsored by the Institute of Politics and was moderated by K. Anthony Appiah, professor of Afro-American studies.