The special session of the United Nations General assembly has brought the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic home to many. Some of the statistics are truly frightening. In South Africa, where almost five million people are HIV positive, the annual death rate is shortly expected to reach 250,000. In neighbouring Botswana - another country prosperous by African standards - almost 40 per cent of the population is HIV positive. African political leaders attending the conference have not only been critical of western attitudes to the problem but have pinpointed some of their own cultural attitudes as contributory factors in the spread of the disease.
President Maitre Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal told the Assembly that "the exorbitant cost of drugs determined exclusively by the profit motive" was immoral and unacceptable. The Mozambican prime minister, Mr Pascoal Manuel Mocumbi, was more self-critical. "We must" he said, "summon the courage to talk frankly and constructively about sexuality. We must recognise the pressures on our children to have sex that is neither safe nor loving . . . . Abstinence is not an option for child brides." The fears for Africa's very future were concisely put by President Olusegun Obasanjo, of Nigeria, who told delegates: "the prospect of extinction of the entire population of a continent looms larger and larger."
African doubts about the seriousness of Europe's approach to the problem were not assuaged by the fact that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, was the only EU head of government to take the time to address the session in person. His announcement at the session yesterday that the Government will spend an additional $30 million annually on helping the "poorest of the poor" fight against AIDS is to be welcomed. His emphasis that the disease was "a symptom and cause of poverty and global inequality" will have had a strong resonance with the African political leaders who attended the session. So too will his call for debt cancellation for those countries in which the disease is at its most ravaging.
Ireland would, he told the assembly, meet the United Nations Target of spending 0.7 per cent of GNP on Overseas Development Aid (ODA) by the target year of 2007. The commitment to meeting the interim target of 0.45 per cent by the end of next year would also be met. Next year Ireland's development budget would increase by over $100 million. These commitments by the Government are deserving of praise. It should ensure, however, not only that the extra finance is made available but that it is used to best advantage. The increases in funding are indeed substantial and must be matched by effective management procedures to ensure that they achieve the maximum benefit for those most in need.