[procaare] Ugandan president calls on leaders to step up AIDS fight

[AEGIS <procaare@healthnet.org>]

Ugandan president calls on leaders to step up AIDS fight
-[AEGIS],(26.10.03).
**************

Kampala (AFP) - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Sunday called on world leaders to
take decisive action to step up the fight against AIDS, as a major international
conference to help the tens of millions living with the disease opened here.

"Achieving a roll down of the AIDS impact calls for strong political leadership, as lack
of this has continued to be an impediment in the HIV/AIDS fight in many countries,
especially in Africa," Museveni told the opening session of a five-day conference of
People Living With HIV/AIDS.

"Governments should give the AIDS epidemic the due political commitment it deserves,"
Museveni told more than 800 delegates from all over the world attending the conference.

He said that sub-Saharan Africa, which has where 80 percent of the 60 million people
living with AIDS, loses two to four percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) because of
AIDS.

Museveni appealed to Africa to invest in research, instead of leaving it to the outside
world, and that governments should also improve their information flow on AIDS.

Community activists and non-governmental organisations workers from around the world are
attending the conference at Kampala's resort of Munyonyo to find ways victims can access
anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment drugs.

Museveni said that a million people have died of AIDS in Uganda in the past 21 years,
while a similar figure carried the HIV virus that causes the disease.


Source: [AEGIS]: Agence France Presse - October 26, 2003
Web:    http://www.aegis.com/todaynews

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