ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — With AIDS hitting Africa harder than any other continent, African leaders, international donors and the U.N. secretary-general will discuss a common front to curb the epidemic during a five-day conference that opens today in the Ethiopian capital.
The U.N. Economic Commission for Africa has invited 1,500 participants to discuss progress in preventing and treating AIDS and to share national responses to the epidemic that in the last two decades has killed 13.7 million Africans out of worldwide total of 16.3 million AIDS victims.
"It is no longer merely a health problem but poses a major development crisis in the continent," the ECA said in a statement. "Sub-Saharan Africa has only one-tenth of the global population, but it bears the brunt of the disease with more than 80 percent of the AIDS-related deaths in the world."
The HIV infection that causes AIDS has taken a devastating toll in poverty-stricken African nations, depriving them of their youths and labor, reducing economic growth and jeopardizing development prospects as well as political stability, the ECA said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will deliver a keynote address Thursday to the conference, the annual gathering of the African Development Forum.
A forum of heads of state is planned to facilitate a faster and more efficient continentwide response to combating the disease.
The presidents of Rwanda, Uganda and Botswana, the vice president of Malawi and the prime ministers of Senegal and Namibia are expected. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa have yet to confirm their participation.