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CNN Live Sunday
U.N. Begins Final Session on AIDS Tomorrow
Aired June 24, 2001 - 18:11 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.N. begins its first special session on AIDS tomorrow, and CNN's Richard Roth has a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The United Nations, it's goal: World peace. But the U.N. is declaring war, not on a country, but on a disease. First the time, the 189 members of the U.N. will hold a special meeting to debate a health issue. AIDS.
JEFFREY SACHS, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: It is recognition of course that this is not a normal case of the disease. This is the greatest disease challenge that humanity has faced in modern history.
ROTH: Last year, the U.N. signature agency for protecting the world, the Security Council, held an unprecedented session on AIDS, declaring the disease a threat to international security. Now it is the general assembly's turn.
AMB. PENNY WENSLEY, CO-CHAIR, U.N. AIDS CONF.: There is essentially a strong wish on the part of member states to really have concrete actions and to define a set of targets.
ROTH: The biggest target, money. A proposal spearheaded by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, asked governments in the private sector to raise $7 to $10 billion annually for a AIDS war chest by 2005.
KOFI ANNAN, U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: Let's be in no doubt, the world has the resources to defeat this epidemic if it really wants to.
ROTH: Annan's rallying cry has drawn less than one billion so far. The U.S. has offered $200 million, which angers an activist with AIDS.
EVAN RUDERMAN, HEALTH GAP COALITION: I don't understand how people could even conceive that the sum that United States has contributing would barely cover the cost of what we're talking about in terms of world epidemic.
ROTH: Though AIDS been here for 20 years, the battle has yet to be fully joined in many parts of the world. 36 million people are infected. In African countries, the U.N. estimates one in five adults has AIDS or the HIV virus that causes it.
The U.N. wants the AIDS conference to spark international action and spur public and private sector interest.
PETER PIOT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, U.N. AIDS PROGRAM: It will improve the understanding of the need to involve people with HIV. Those at most at risk in the fight against AIDS. But the world is not going to change suddenly because we have a U.N. conference.
ROTH (on camera): Most of the countries devastated by AIDS are those least able to pay for prevention and treatment; and setting targets and timetables might not be enough to end the epidemic.
Richard Roth, CNN, United Nations.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FRAZIER: We're going to spend some more time on this now with Stephen Lewis, U.N. special envoy to the secretary-general on HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Mr. Ambassador, thank you for joining us this evening.
STEPHEN LEWIS, U.N. SPECIAL ENVOY: My pleasure.
FRAZIER: I have to ask first, before we talk about the situation in Africa. Let's talk about the situation in the U.N., where a lot of member nations aren't really getting on board this train.
LEWIS: There's obviously some significant discussion about parts of the document, the Declaration of Commitment, as it's called, Stephen. But as someone who has watched these multilateral negotiations over 15, 20 years, they have a dynamic of their own; there's always these linguistic labyrinths where a country struggles with the meanings of world.
But ultimately, there is a consensus and ultimately, we will move the issue forward.
FRAZIER: To be specific, there are some Muslim counties, where the culture is a little more reserved and where they object to language in the declaration that would talk about efforts made to help men have sex with other men or sex workers in the trade, for example.
LEWIS: Yes, questions of homosexuality, questions of sexuality generally are enormously sensitive in cultural terms for numbers of countries, difficult for countries to come directly to grips with them, and the language of resolution.
Other countries, particularly those in the Western world, feel differently. They will find a compromise. They will find language which accommodates the instincts of both sides, and won't prejudice our capacity to move forward.
FRAZIER: And move forward to do what, Mr. Ambassador? There's a lot of talk about help for an AIDS vaccine, but we're away from that. In the short term, what would you do?
LEWIS: In the short term, what's happened I think, Stephen, in the last several months, is really quite astonishing: the drug prices have plummeted. There have been serious efforts made to describe how to deliver anti-retroviral treatment. The famous drug cocktails to those who are infected and to prolong life and turn it into a chronic disease, rather than an immediately fatal one.
The secretary general of the United Nations has effectively put himself on the line. He's talked about it as a personal priority and rallied the United Nation's agencies. The African leadership, which was so entrenched in denial and consumed by worries of stigma and passivity, now feel that they're fighting for the survival of their country. This is a qualitatively different sense.
We have this global trust fund that is launched, moving slowly but its irreversible. Money will come. And then it will culminate this week in the discussions.
I don't want to engage in self-delusion. This is the toughest battle we've ever waged against a disease in human history, as one of your interviewees said to Richard Roth, but it looks as though we may be able finally to turn the tide.
FRAZIER: What would be the most important thing to turn, to get the kind of resources, money to help fight it, or to turn cultural taboos around?
LEWIS: I think all of them have to operate in tandem. You can't do one at the expense of the other. If you're going to do significant treatment to begin to deal with people who would otherwise die, you must remember to do prevention and care simultaneously, because they are inextricably linked.
If you're going to deal with cultural taboos on the one hand, you have to raise the resources to give countries hope. And these countries also need human resources, Stephen, they're devastated. The infrastructures are shredded. The extended families are destroyed. We're dealing with a kind of contemporary apocalypse.
And there comes a moment in time, and that moment has been reached when human kind has to rally. When we've watched for 20 years while millions have died on the sub-Saharan African continent, and it is necessary now I think to mobilize, as all countries want to do, and intervene in a way which gives people some hope and recognizes incrementally that we can turn it around.
FRAZIER: Well, Mr. Ambassador, we're grateful to hear your passion on this issue. Africa a long way from your home. Your native home in Canada. We can tell that it has affected you very deeply. We'll turn to you again through the course of the week, as this conference continues.
LEWIS: Thank you.
FRAZIER: Stephen Lewis speaking to us from the AIDS Conference in New York.
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