UN Says HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Ethiopia Worsening

Originally published by Reuters Health, March 21, 2002

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) — A senior United Nations official said Thursday that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was worsening in Ethiopia and urged authorities to take preventive measures.

"Ethiopia has crossed the 5% threshold prevalent rate of HIV/AIDS. We have got up to 3 million or more Ethiopians who are infected with the disease," said Stephan Lewis, a special envoy of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

"This is a crisis of cosmic proportion for Ethiopia. Unless urgent and dramatic responses are taken, you would get an explosion of a pandemic of the kind that had occurred in east and southern Africa," Lewis told a news conference.

Lewis was speaking after touring parts of Ethiopia believed to have a high prevalence and after meeting with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi during a 7-day visit.

"The sense of dying and the dead everywhere we visited was evidence of the prevailing catastrophic situation," Lewis said. "A breakthrough against the pandemic depends entirely on the response that evolves from the authorities."

Lewis said the efforts put in by the Ethiopian leadership to fight HIV/AIDS, which kills 6 million people each year, around half of them in Africa, were too slow to bring a difference. He said the growing number of HIV/AIDS orphans—estimated at around 800,000—painted a grim picture.

"We saw, as we traveled, households virtually abandoned because of HIV/AIDS-related deaths," Lewis said. "Little girls of 10 look after other siblings and they live in appalling conditions. That should not be allowed to continue."

The World Bank has offered Ethiopia $60 million to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic.