AIDS Becoming Africa’s Top Human Security Issue, UN Warns

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UN AIDS
UNICEF * UNDP * UNFPA *UNDCP
UNESCO * WHO * WORLD BANK
US Media o Oflico (212) 584.5024

PRESS RELEASE

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Embargoed for release:
Monday, January 10, 2000
11:00AM EST

Contact: Andrew Shih, 212/584-5024

SAIDS BECOMING AFRICA'S TOP HUMAN
SECURITY ISSUE, UN WARNS
Devastating Epidemic Threatens Social and Political Stability
NEW YORK AIDS, the disease which in Africa kills tentimes more people than war, will
be in the spotlight here today as the United Nations Security Council begins its first ever
meeting on a health issue. In. another first, an American vice president, Al Gore, will chair
the meeting, designed to focus attention on African issues.
The 15-member Security Council's decision to address AIDS underscores.,the rapid
evolution of the epidemic, which is fast becoming sub-Saharan Africa's number one human
security issue.
"By overwhelming the continent's health and social services, by creating millions of orphans,
and by decimating health workers and teachers, AIDS is causing social and economic crises
which in turn threaten political stability," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the Security
Council.
"In already unstable societies, this cocktail of disasters is a sure recipe for more conflict.
And conflict, in turn, provides fertile ground for further infections," Mr.Annan said,
AIDS is now the leading killer in sub-Saharan Africa, where 23,3 million people have HIV or
AIDS; 90% of the world's 11 million AIDS orphans are in Africa; in 1998, 200,000 African
died from war -but 2,2 million died from HIV/AIDS. Though it has just a tenth of the world's
population, sub-Saharan Africa is home to two-thirds of theworld's HIV-positive population.
In Africa's most affected regions, as many as one person in four are estimated to carry HIV,
the virus that causes AIDS.

About half of HIV infections occur before the age of 25, and these young men and women
typically die of AIDS before 35. The disease is killing people in their most.productive years
and destabilizing all walks of African life: health, education, industry, agriculture, transport.
This dual devastation of debilitating disease and early death is turning back decades of
development and reversing economic growth across the continent.

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