July 15, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 14, 1424

PARIS, July 14: He turns 85 on Friday, looks a little frail now and walks with a stick, but Nelson Mandela showed at the Paris AIDS conference here Monday that his campaigning spirit and charisma remain undimmed.

In a speech that earned him a standing ovation from 5,000 scientists and grass-roots activists, Mandela punched out at the lazy and the greedy who had helped spawn a global peril, praised those who had tirelessly fought against it, and urged one and all to do more.

The former South African president said bluntly that despite some successes, the two-decade-old war on AIDS had been a shocking failure.

At least 26 million have already died of AIDS, 95 percent of them in the developing world, and 45 million have the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), he said.

“These numbers are staggering, in fact incomprehensible,” Mandela declared. “By all accounts we are dealing with the greatest health crisis in human history.”

Even though science had provided important tools for fighting the peril, many of the tools lay lamentably unused, Mandela said.

He was bitterly critical that the cost of anti-retroviral drugs had placed these life-saving medications beyond the reach of the poor.

Disparity “is a shocking reality that we cannot hide from,” he said. “This is a global injustice. It is a travesty of human rights on a global scale.”

Mandela said he was pleased that, at last, “the usual excuse” of insufficient funding was beginning to fade, thanks to an influx of money into the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and bilateral commitments.

He singled out George W. Bush for praise, noting “the leadership” of the United States and its president in the plan to spend 15 billion dollars over five years to combat AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.

But, he warned, the promise had better be honoured.

“We, the people of Africa, will follow the delivery of this critical commitment with great interest.”

Where America led, Europe should follow, he said.

“Given the size of its collective population and economy, Europe should at least be matching if not exceeding the United States’ contribution,” he said.

Many African countries were guilty of having failed to face up to the danger of AIDS, Mandela said, adding that the noble exceptions were Uganda, Senegal and, more recently, Botswana.

Mandela sketched an initiative for the next World AIDS Day on December 1, when his charity, the Mandela Foundation, will partner the Global Fund to “ask people around the world to give one minute of their life” to fight AIDS.

Large corporations as well as individuals will be invited to pitch in, he said.

Mandela is an iconic figure at AIDS meetings, memorably creating an outpouring of emotion at the 2000 International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, where normally reserved researchers stamped and cheered and climbed on chairs to get a glimpse of him.

At the end of his Paris speech, as a wave of applause erupted around the auditorium, a noisy group of demonstrators held up a large banner and chanted protest slogans, demanding that the rich countries put up funds to provide anti-retroviral drugs for six million chronically ill people with HIV in poor countries.

The veteran anti-apartheid fighter paused onstage, read the banner, and a gigantic smile broke out on his face.

He clapped along to the slogans, and when a protester climbed on stage, beckoned her to join him. He put his arm around her shoulder and — this being Mandela — pledged his support for the fight.—AFP

The international conference on the fight against AIDS, with delegates from 120 nations, opened here on Sunday.

Some 5,000 researchers, scientists and medical personnel active in combating the disease will be discussing until Wednesday the current state of AIDS research and how to turn new developments into effective therapy.

Despite the development, in 1996, of powerful cocktails that have been effective in stalling the ravages of the HIV-virus and decreased the AIDS mortality rate, much work remains to be done.—dpa/AFP