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UN and Africa
Programme Number: 076
Week of: Sunday, 27th November, 2005
Recording Date: Thursday, 1st December, 2005
Topical Issue(s):
PREVENTION AND TREATMENT REDUCE
HIV/AIDS INFECTIONS AND DEATHS
CLIMATE CHANGE IS HAVING DEVASTATING
CONSEQUENCES IN AFRICA
Editor / Presenter: Ransford Cline-Thomas
Producer: Derrick Mbatha
Production Assistant: Chuck Appel
Studio Engineer: John Macias
Duration: 15’00”
PRESENTER: This is United Nations Radio in New York.
*** SIG TUNE *** (Please, play briefly, dip upon
wave, and hold under narr.)
PRESENTER:
Hello and welcome to UN and Africa, I’m Ransford
Cline-Thomas.
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and hold under)
PRESENTER:
On the first of December every year the United Nations
observes World AIDS Day to put the spotlight on this
pandemic. This year’s observance comes just
a week after the launch of a special report compiled
by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS,
UNAIDS, and the World Health Organization.
CLIP-1: DESMOND JOHNS
“The headline message is ‘Prevention Works’
and we have ample evidence of this that
has built up over the years. But for them to work
there has to be sustained intensive
application of these tools.”
NARRATOR:
That was Desmond Johns, Director of the UNAIDS New
York Office, talking about this year’s report
on HIV AIDS. We will hear more from him and his colleague
Dr. Jim Kim of the World Health Organization.
Also in this edition we revisit the issue of climate
change which is having devastating consequences in
Africa.
CLIP-2: DR. PAUL EPSTEIN
“What we are seeing overall is more profound
and prolonged droughts and more heavy rain events
that lead to flooding.”
PRESENTER:
And that was Dr. Paul Epstein of the Harvard Medical
School and a
key author of a recent report looking at how climate
change affect not
only the environment but also the health and economies
of African
countries.
So stay tuned to UN and Africa.
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until first sentence.)
Prevention and Treatment Reduce HIV/AIDS Infections
and Deaths.
PRESENTER:
December the first every year is observed by the
international community as World Aids Day to put the
spotlight on the HIV/AIDS pandemic which continues
to devastate countries around the world, particularly
in Sub-Saharan Africa. In his message for the day,
the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says
that there are new signs of progress in almost every
region of the world to tackle the pandemic. He says
halting the spread of AIDS is not only a millennium
development goal in itself, but a prerequisite for
reaching most of the others, which include fighting
poverty, promoting gender equality, reducing child
mortality and improving maternal health. The Secretary-General
also notes that in certain countries in Africa life
expectancy has dropped dramatically to about thirty-eight
today.
CUT 1: KOFI ANNAN
In those countries you are losing teachers, doctors,
security people and you have serious droughts and
you have serious food security situation, and therefore
the society cannot even cook. They are losing their
experienced farmers. They are losing women who are
normally the care givers and know how to hold a family
together in times a crisis. So if you do not have
the talents and you do not have human resources to
be able to produce your agricultural needs, to be
able to care for your sick, to be able to educate
your children in school, you are looking at a society
that could be disintegrating. On what basis then do
you move on to tackle the seven other goals.
PRESENTER:
The Secretary-General has also warned that much more
needs to be done to ensure that people who have been
infected with HIV are given the treatment they need
in order to tackle the pandemic.
CUT 2: KOFI ANNAN
As of today only about a million people are getting
the anti-retroviral treatment. So if you are not able
to care for and treat those who have the disease and
you are not able to slow the additional infections,
you are really compounding the problem and we also
need to look at it in terms of how we strengthen health
services in these countries where the disease has
really taken hold.
PRESENTER:
That was UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME
This year’s observance of World AIDS Day came
just a week after the Joint United Nations Programme
on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organization published
a special report on HIV prevention. It shows that
the number of people living with HIV/AIDS this year
surpassed forty million and that more than three million
people died of AIDS-related illnesses. The report
says that Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the region
most affected by the disease. For example, the HIV
infection level among pregnant women is twenty per
cent or higher in Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South
Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Dr. Jim Kim is Director
of the HIV/AIDS department at the World Health Organization.
CUT 3: DR. JIM KIM
In some countries, Swaziland, for example, which has
the highest sero prevalence in the world, the rates
of HIV among pregnant women soared to 43 per cent,
which is a significant increase since 2000. It’s
the highest rate in the world.
PRESENTER:
Women continue to suffer more from HIV/AIDS with
young women between fifteen and twenty-four years
of age being at least three time more likely to be
HIV-positive than young men. Dr. Desmond Johns, who
is the head of the New York Office of UNAIDS, says
that young women are two-and-a-half to six times more
susceptible to be infected with HIV than their male
counterparts. But why is this so? Dr. Johns.
CUT 4 DR. DESMOND JOHNS
This is an expression of inter-generational sex where
young woman for whatever reason are forming sexual
relationships with older men to stay in school, to
pass a test, to get a job, to keep a job, for a whole
range of issues. So the question of protecting woman
or enabling young women in particular to protect themselves
has to go far beyond just ABC.
PRESENTER:
ABC, of course, stands for abstinence, be faithful
and condom use. While ABC is generally accepted as
a simplified expression for promoting prevention of
HIV infection, health experts say the reality is more
complex than that. A study done in Durban and Soweto
in South Africa, and Harare in Zimbabwe, has shown
that neither marriage nor a woman’s fidelity
is enough to prevent infection. In fact, Dr. Kim says
that forty per cent of infection rates in the study
were among women who claimed to have stayed faithful
to one partner.
CUT 5 DR. JIM KIM
In this particular study sixty-six per cent of the
women reported having only one lifetime partner. Seventy-nine
per cent had abstained from sex until at least the
age of seventeen. We are seeing similar data from
reports that we expect to be coming out of Uganda
in which the risk of infection for women who remain
faithful to their partner and didn’t use condoms
was in fact higher than for women who had multiple
partners but used condoms every single time.
PRESENTER:
Meanwhile, Dr. Desmond Johns believes that what makes
women more vulnerable to HIV infection, despite being
faithful to their partners is lack of empowerment
and their unequal status.
CUT 6: DR. DESMOND JOHNS
If women themselves are not truly empowered because
of the broader situation that they find themselves
in, cannot abstain because they are either in a marriage
with an older man, or thy are economically dependent,
or they are subject to violence within a relationship,
so the answer lies in a series of steps, immediate
and some longer term..
PRESENTER
Dr. Johns lists some of the steps that can and should
be taken both in the short and longer terms.
CUT 7: DR. DESMOND JOHNS
Educating girls, empowering them, making the legislative
changes that enable women
to inherit and, to the more subtle make it less necessary
for young girls to develop
these protective relationships will take some doings.
But there are things that we can go
now. At least it is now registered that young girls
are particularly at risk and will be
will be the focus of special attention in terms of
female condom, microbicides and other
female-controlled methods of prevention. But it’s
a battle and it’s going to take some
time.
PRESENTER:
Although HIV/AIDS continues to be a serious health
problem on the African
continent and with South Africa’s epidemic,
one of the largest in the
world, showing no sign of relenting, the UN update
on HIV/AIDS does
have some positive news. Again Dr. Desmond Johns.
CUT 8: DR. DESMOND JOHNS
The headline message is ‘Prevention Works’
and we have ample evidence of this that
has built up over the years. But for them to work
there has to be sustained intensive application of
these tools. We have seen the sustained application
of prevention programmes in Uganda and Tanzania reduce
HIV prevention among young people.
PRESENTER:
Other African countries where there has been real
decline in HIV rates include Kenya and Zimbabwe, as
Dr. Jim Kim of the World Health Organization explains.
CUT 9: DR. JIM KIM
In urban parts of Kenya, from a peak of ten per cent
in the late 1990’s has dropped to seven per
cent. And that’s only the second time in more
than two decades there is sustained decline in HIV
rate has occurred. In Africa the other example, of
course, is Uganda. And, interestingly, new evidence
shows a drop in HIV rates since 2002 in Zimbabwe,
from 26 per cent in 2002 to 21 per cent in 2004 among
pregnant women.
PRESENTER:
That was Dr. Jim Kim Director of the HIV/AIDS Department
at the World Health Organization. You also heard Dr.
Desmond Johns, the head of the New York Office of
the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.
STING/JINGLE: UN AND AFRICA THEME
Drought and Floods Caused by Climate Change Devastate
Africa
PRESENTER:
As thousands of delegates meet in the Canadian City
of Montreal to
discuss best practices for reducing climate change,
the African continent
continues to suffer from extreme weather conditions
such as drought and
floods which are linked, of course, to climate change.
It is generally agreed
that global warming, which is caused by the emissions
of greenhouse gases
is posing a serious threat to the environment. The
Centre for Health and the
Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, has
published a report on
this subject, sponsored by the United Nations Development
Programme and
Swiss Re, an organization involved in studying the
risks associated with
climate change. UN Radio’s Derrick Mbatha has
been discussing this issue
with Dr.Paul Epstein of the Harvard Medical School
and a key author of the
report, focussing on the African continent.
EPSTEIN: And what we look at are the health dimensions
of climate change, of warming and extreme weather
events for heat waves, for floods, what that has meant
for Mozambique with the floods in 2000, with malaria
up surging. We look at the heat waves and droughts
that are active in Southern Africa today and we now
see an epidemic breaking out in Mozambique, which
is from eating cassava before it is ready to be eaten,
and that contains cyanide. This is a drought-driven
disease that we’ve not even on our wave length.
MBATHA: You made mention of malaria, the increasing
cases of malaria on the African continent. Could you
elaborate on that?
EPSTEIN: Throughout the world we are seeing changes
in mountainous areas where glaciers are melting, plant
communities are moving up. The temperature at which
the ground is frozen, the permafrost, the permanently
frozen ground is receding and we are seeing mosquito
circulate at higher altitudes. There is therefore
a consistency in terms of the conditions conducive
to malaria transmission in the highlands where ten
per cent of the population of Africa lives. In addition
we are seeing extreme weather events, the large floods
that lead to huge outbreaks as in Mozambique, a five-fold
increase after the flooding of six weeks and three
cyclones. We saw in Kenya Rift Valley fever also occurring,
upsurge and affect animals and humans following huge
flooding in the late nineties.
MBATHA: And what is causing flooding on the African
continent in particular?
EPSTEIN: What we are seeing overall is more profound
and prolonged droughts and more heavy rain events
that lead to flooding. Droughts can give you meningitis
in the belt, the Sahara and Sub-Sahara. They can lead
to rodent populations that affect crops. Floods clearly
can give you clusters of outbreaks of mosquito, rodent-borne
disease, water-borne disease like cholera and so on
that follow in the face of flooding.
MBATHA: Is there anything that Africans can do to
mitigate these damages or to solve this problem?
EPSTEIN: Well, I think some of this information about
the weather impacts on disease can be helpful with
the early warning systems. On the other hand, resources,
capacity, coping capabilities have to be enhanced
in order to profit from this climate forecasting.
We need ultimately to slow down the burning of fossil
fuels rapidly to help the system re-stabilize and
help, hopefully prevent these swings from droughts
to floods that are plaguing nations across this planet.
MBATHA: I saw a report about Malawi and how Malawi
is losing forests because people are chopping them
down to sell and to use as fuels in their homes. What
can be done to stop that?
EPSTEIN: This is an energy problem. Cooking food
in the house with wood is not the healthiest thing.
There was an article in the Boston Globe that talks
about a solar oven that’s being developed by
an African researcher. We do need other means of generating
energy to cook food. One of the drivers, I think,
of this clean energy transition is the need for cooking
food, for maintaining clean water, for desalinizing
oceans so that we can grow crops, replenish land that’s
being denuded of forests. And so it’s the problems
of food and water that can also be drivers of the
solutions.
PRESENTER:
That was Dr. Paul Epstein of the Harvard Medical
School, speaking
with UN Radio’s Derrick Mbatha.
SIG TUNE ((Bring up briefly, dip and hold under)
And that’s for this edition of UN and Africa.
From me, Ransford Cline-Thomas, Producer Derrick Mbatha,
Production Assistant Charles Appel and engineer John
Macias, good bye for now.
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