African First Ladies against AIDS

GENEVA, July 18 (AFP) — Eighteen African first ladies said Thursday they had joined forces against AIDS in Africa, and were setting up an organisation to focus on cooperation and communication to combat the pandemic.

“We want to become more involved in the action, but we also want to exchange our experiences,” said Simone Gbagbo, wife of Ivory Coast President, Laurent Gbagbo, at a three-day meeting here.

The UN AIDS agency, UNAIDS, which is sponsoring the meeting, said the new Organisation of African First Ladies Against AIDS would help to raise the profile of the anti-AIDS campaign.

Gbagbo and her Zambian counterpart Maureen Mwanawasa, told reporters that 35 African countries would be involved in the campaign to address gaps in HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention and treatment in Africa.

The continent is home to about 70 percent of the estimated 40 million people in the world living with HIV/AIDS, and UNAIDS has estimated that 55 percent of adults infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are women.

Gbagbo said she had just returned from a one-week visit to Uganda, where she met doctors involved in the campaign against AIDS, adding that she planned to travel next to the Central African Republic.

“We can use the experience of Uganda, which has worked a lot to fight against AIDS, in order to improve our own working methods,” she said.

Also attending the Geneva meeting were the first ladies of Burundi, Congo, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Tanzania, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

“We are also hoping that this organisation will assist to disseminate information to the women and the girls who have been identified as one of the most vulnerable groups,” Mwanawasa said.

“We should insist with our governments that education for girls is provided, and that female condoms should be available at reasonable prices,” she added, noting that they were more expensive than male condoms, or sometimes not available at all.

The head of UNAIDS for Africa, Michel Sidibe, said the first ladies’ organisation would help knock down a new “wall of silence” surrounding AIDS in Africa.

“In the last five years, we have managed to shatter the conspiracy of silence that reached into the highest levels of the state, that is, the presidents,” he said.

But now the accelerating AIDS pandemic is hitting a “second wall of silence,” Sidibe said. “It’s the one that separates the husband from his wife, parents from children, governments from communities, the producers of medicine from those who don’t have access to treatment.

“The first ladies can certainly help us to knock down this wall,” he said.