HIV/Aids infection rates will continue to rise as long as society treats the condition as a medical problem rather than a disease caused by poverty, social injustice and gender inequality, a conference has been told.
Prof Michael Kelly, who has lived in Zambia since 1955 and who was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1961, said too much attention was paid to sex when it came to HIV/Aids rather than zoning in on the "justice dimensions" which led to the spread of the disease.
"If you are responding to the medical problem, you are responding too late," he told the conference organised by the Society of African Missions at University College Cork yesterday.
Prof Kelly said that sexual behaviour alone could not explain the differences in the way HIV had spread in Africa compared with the rest of the world. People living in Zambia and elsewhere in Africa were more vulnerable to HIV/Aids infection because their immune systems had been depressed by poverty-related conditions such as malaria, TB, bilarzia and untreated STIs.
Prof Kelly, who was formerly professor of education at the University of Zambia, spoke of the devastation that Aids had wreaked on Africa, in particular its women and children.
An estimated 12-18 million children have been orphaned because of Aids, while in Africa, 57 per cent of those infected with HIV are women.
Prof Kelly said gender was one of the main causes of the spread of the disease, insisting that women in some parts of Africa had very little in the way of power - sexual or otherwise.
He said more attention should be also given to the dire situation of the vast number of grandparents who are taking care of Aids orphans, their grandchildren, on their own.
The Tullamore-born professor who serves on the advisory board of the regional HIV/Aids initiative for Southern African added that the lack of availability of anti-retroviral drugs for patients and in particular young children was scandalous.
"There is no medicine that is affordable and available to young children.
Manette Ramaili, the first ambassador of Lesotho, told the conference that his country, like other African countries, was struggling with brain drain to countries such as Britain and Canada.
Ms Ramaili said she was concerned about the impact HIV/Aids was having on education; Lesotho loses close to 300 teachers a year to death via Aids.
She added that children were also missing school because they had to stay home to take care of their ill parents.