Speech

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Speech by the Hon Alexander Downer, MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs,
Advisory Group on Health/AusAID seminar,
Canberra, 22 November 2000.

Australia's International response to HIV/AIDS

Introduction

Thank you Bruce. Lady Morauta; Your Excellencies; other members of the diplomatic corps; distinguished speakers and guests.

As part of the Government's global HIV/AIDS initiative, I convened this seminar to bring together Australia's leading public health experts to examine the regional response to HIV/AIDS. I'm very pleased you are all able to attend today, and I am sure your deliberations will guarantee Australia's regional HIV/AIDS programs do make a difference.

Today you will hear from a range of speakers, including world-renowned demographer, Professor Jack Caldwell, about the potentially devastating impact of the epidemic in PNG and Melanesia. We are also honoured to have present Lady Morauta, Patron of the Friends Foundation, who will talk about community responses to the epidemic in Papua New Guinea, and Maire ("My-ray") Bopp du Pont, a young HIV positive woman from Tahiti, who will challenge the myths and fears about HIV/AIDS.

In my remarks to you today, I want to outline the scale of the problem posed by HIV/AIDS in our region, before informing you of some of the work Australia is doing in this important area. Above all, I want to stress how cooperation - across government, across communities, and across the region - is making real progress in our fight to halt the spread of this disease.

Everyone's problem - a crisis of development

Many of you are familiar with the HIV/AIDS statistics. However, it is worth reminding ourselves of just why HIV/AIDS is everyone's problem - quite simply, and very disturbingly, UNAIDS figures indicate that 34 million people are living with the virus. A great many of those 34 million people will be dead before 2010.

On that sort of scale, HIV/AIDS is more devastating than the Black Death that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages.

In our region, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, and parts of India have particularly high infection rates. In China, the Ministry of Health warns of 10 million cases within this decade. In Papua New Guinea, AIDS and related diseases are the leading cause of death at Port Moresby general hospital. In much of southern and eastern Africa, one quarter of the population is infected. By the year 2010, it is estimated life expectancy in Botswana will be reduced to 29 years of age.

HIV/AIDS threatens to reverse decades of development. As the Director General of the World Health Organisation, Gro Harlem Brundtland, recently said, HIV affects more people than it infects. When I met her on her visit to Australia last month, we discussed the severe impact of HIV not only on health, but also on education, industry, human resources and the economy in general.

The World Bank has warned that AIDS could halt or even reverse Asia's economic growth. In many countries, villagers are too sick to harvest their crops, children are orphaned, school teachers and health workers are too ill to contribute to their communities.

Already, in silence and with stealth, AIDS is slowly but surely picking at the thread holding the fabric of these already vulnerable societies together. And once AIDS unravels lives and economies at the community level, its effects will begin to be seen at the regional, national and international levels.

Once the epidemic reaches those kinds of proportions, HIV/AIDS becomes a threat to security.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warns that AIDS killed ten times more people in Africa than armed conflict last year. Countries threatened by HIV/AIDS should address it no less seriously than they would react to a threat from guns and bullets.

That is why our policies and responses need to be sophisticated and comprehensive. It must pursue socio-economic development for all people, embrace the global environment, and recognise that public health is an international issue.

HIV/AIDS is not just a local issue, affecting a few people in a few communities. The impact is much bigger than that. This is an epidemic that will not only strike at individuals - it will strike at whole societies.

Australia's strong commitment

The message I want to deliver today is that we - Australia and our friends in the region - need to argue at every opportunity that this epidemic can be averted with the right sort of commitment.

We should take as our lead the dedication shown by health professionals and others working in the area of HIV/AIDS in each of our countries. Too often the response of countries to AIDS has been marked by - to use the title of the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on HIV/AIDS - The Politics of Indifference.

We know how to prevent transmission of HIV, but successful prevention programs require political leadership - for example, the kind of leadership shown by Sir Mekere Morauta, Prime Minister of PNG, and Dr Mahathir Mohamed, Prime Minister of Malaysia, to name two individuals in our own region.

For this reason, I am pleased to announce that next October in Melbourne I will be convening a special session on HIV/AIDS and development as part of the 6^th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. I will be inviting ministers and senior officials from the region to a meeting that will address the broad range of problems caused by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, including social, economic, financial, employment, education and other issues.

The challenges posed by HIV/AIDS to the nations of the Asia Pacific are that big. Dealing with them requires not just doctors and nurses, community health centres and health departments. It demands a whole of government approach across the entire region.

To this end, I am announcing today a $200,000 commitment from our Government to the 6^th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. This will assist people from the region participate in the Congress, so we can all learn from their experiences in HIV/AIDS prevention.

Additionally, Australia will continue its work with UNAIDS, and will do all can to ensure the United Nations General Assembly special session on HIV/AIDS next June achieves practical outcomes for developing countries. Leading up to the UN special session, we will be looking to coordinate closely our funding commitments with those of Japan, the United States and the European Union, so that we all support the AIDS frameworks being developed by governments in the region.

Achievements through the aid program

These substantial financial commitments are simply the first step in achieving results. Based on Australia's strong public health expertise, our aid program is pursuing innovative responses in partnership with countries in the region.

For example, in Indonesia, religious groups are working together in a campaign to encourage people to avoid infection. Sex workers in the Philippines are developing effective education programs to limit the spread of disease. In the Pacific, peer education is proving highly effective at informing young Pacific islanders about HIV/AIDS preventive measures. And even in remote villages in Laos, Australia funds improved health standards by means of an educative puppet show.

The Global HIV/AIDS Initiative

In July this year I announced a Global HIV/AIDS Initiative of $200 million. This represented a more than 100 per cent increase on previous government funding and more than doubled annual HIV/AIDS expenditure. Since that announcement, Australia has developed plans to expand programs in Indonesia and South East Asia, and is starting on new projects in India and Papua New Guinea.

But more important than our financial commitment are the high levels of cooperation that are being developed. Partnerships between countries in the region are critical in the face of this epidemic.

PNG - our largest commitment

Australia's work with Papua New Guinea in tackling HIV/AIDS is a fine example of our effective partnerships with governments, regional forums and community groups around the region.

In PNG, up to an estimated 15,000 people are living with HIV. To put that into perspective, Australia, with almost 5 times the population, has an estimated 12,000 HIV positive people.

In response to the challenge of HIV/AIDS, the Government of PNG has developed a comprehensive National Plan for HIV prevention and care. Australia and PNG are working together to implement the plan - a plan that involves raising awareness, expanding medical services and strengthening PNG organisations so they can manage their own response to the epidemic. Australia is also providing $60 million over the next five years for PNG's National HIV/AIDS Support Project.

Conclusion

As World AIDS Day approaches, I am very pleased Australia and its neighbours are working closely together in responding to the epidemic. Through this cooperation, Australia and its partners are developing an effective formula to fight HIV/AIDS.

But we still have much more to do.

We must continue to encourage the political commitment of leaders around the region. And we must ensure Governments work in partnership with health professionals and the community, including HIV positive people.

Most importantly of all, we must take the debate about HIV/AIDS beyond a discussion on health problems. Because when we talk about the threat of AIDS, we must do more than talk about the need to practice safe sex or use clean needles - the problems are much more complex than that.

If we fail to join together to meet the challenge posed by HIV/AIDS, the consequences will be much greater than individuals dying of AIDS, tragic though each one of those deaths will be. For the end result will be social and economic dislocation on a large scale, perhaps threatening the future of entire communities.

Today's seminar demonstrates our Government's commitment to ensuring the aid program has the best advice and skills available in implementing its response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I wish you every success with your discussions, and look forward to hearing your views on actions we can all take to lift the shadow of this disease from the future of our societies.

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Local Date: Saturday, 10-Jan-2009 01:36:57 EST