Lusaka, 17/09/2000

Lusaka's international conference on AIDS in Africa will at least have permitted to let people know without ambiguity that the AIDS epidemic is a worldwide sanitary catastrophe; an epidemic which takes alarming proportions, kills millions of people, jeopardizes the economies and the development of the countries.

Nevertheless, apart from its scandalous, inconsistent and unrelevant programme, this conference will have been totally deserted by the politicians.

After Jacques Chirac's bombastic speech end of 97 in Abidjan, France contents itself with a derisory $5million contribution for the reduction of mother-to-child transmission and access to ARV in Southern countries. The European Union, the first sponsor in the AIDS fight, sends in Lusaka a puppet representative who flings, at the opening plenary, a shameful speech 10 years outdated. When adressed by Act Up-Paris, she just proves totally ignorant about the realities of AIDS. The World Bank, at last aware of the disaster, imposes its leadership in the AIDS fight, but forgets that, before being an development problem, AIDS is a disease needing medical care.

The international community has been ignoring the gravity of the situation for 15 years and refuses to take necessary measures. It lets the epidemic spread for savings' sake, wastes its time to promote policies limited to prevention, deliberately forgetting that if prevention can be efficient in the North it is because it is articulated with access to health care for people living with AIDS. Today, the acknowledgment of failure is clear for prevention in the most affected countries because AIDS remains a taboo, a fatality; because nothing is really proposed to contaminated people but to learn how to live positively waiting for death.

In this context, UNAIDS makes the statement that most infected people know nothing of their serologic status. What a surprise! Not only is testing out of reach in most countries but also it is obvious that nobody wants to know about their status if seropositivity just means "give up hope". And there is no health care or so little in most poor countries. Such a cheap treatment as Bactrim ($3 a month in generic), a very efficient antibiotic for the opportunistic infections that so often lead to death, has never benefited from any national or international campaign and is unavailable in many countries.

The World Bank and UNAIDS have said it again : a mass political mobilisation is indispensable. But the targets that the states and the sponsors must set themselves must be clear. It is not possible to fight against AIDS is access to health care is set aside. And it is exactly what happened at Lusaka's conference : access to health care was deliberately ignored leaving the place to a scandalous speech lauding abstinence, moral order, traditional cares and sending the fight against AIDS back 15 years before.

However, the present stakes are clear. The states and sponsors must urgently :

- increase their financing for access to health care.

- support the possibility of resorting to compulsory licences and parallel imports so as to permit the Southern countries to obtain expensive treatments and drugs. These countries can't come up against the prohibitive prices imposed by drug companies any longer. The international community, starting with the French government, must involve itself politically to warrant reasonable prices in the most affected countries.

Act Up-Paris demands that the European Union explain its permanent silence and that the French government involve itself genuinely.

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