With 25 million Africans suffering from AIDS, presidents and prime ministers from the continent today appealed for help in saving their people from a death sentence.
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"The future of our continent is bleak and the prospect of extinction of the entire population of a continent looms larger and larger," Nigerian President Mr Olusegun Obasanjo told more than 180 delegates.
He was among two dozen presidents and prime ministers, most from Africa and the Caribbean, attending the first high-level UN General Assembly session on AIDS, which is to end tomorrow with a blueprint for action. Some 3,000 people descended on New York for the conference.
The conference also heard today how the fight against AIDS requires helping young African women and girls achieve sexual and economic equality to protect themselves from the deadly disease.
AIDS infection rates are rising rapidly among young women and girls in many African countries.
In Mozambique, HIV rates for girls and young women are estimated at 15 percent, twice the rate of boys their age. Prime Minister Pascoal Manuel Mocumbi said three out of five girls are married by age 18, 40 percent of them to much older, sexually experienced men who may expose them to sexually transmitted diseases.
"Abstinence is not an option for these child brides. Those who try to negotiate condom use commonly face violence or rejection," Mr Mocumbi told a UN General Assembly special session on HIV and AIDS.
The three-day meeting is set to conclude today with a declaration setting goals for fighting the epidemic, which has killed 22 million people worldwide and now infects 36 million, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.