Abuja summit will help end conspiracy of silence on HIV/AIDS, Annan says

As ministerial meetings got under way Tuesday in Abuja, Nigeria, in advance of the African summit on HIV/AIDS, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said this week's forum would help cast light on the once-taboo subject of the deadly disease.

"The people are speaking out now, the conspiracy of silence is broken, and we need to have a comprehensive approach to the disease which combines the prevention and treatment," Annan told reporters late on Monday in Accra, Ghana, where he stopped over for a brief visit to his home country before heading to the African Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Diseases.

The Secretary-General, who is to deliver a major action-oriented address to Summit on Thursday, stressed that the event offered African leaders an opportunity to "come together to join the fight against HIV/AIDS."

Annan said that in response to the epidemic, there had been a recent surge of attention -- a "new energy and new engagement on the part of leaders on this continent and around the world." He stressed that the United Nations was working with other partners from around the world -- including the pharmaceutical companies, the donor community and global civil society -- to tackle this epidemic.

The Abuja Summit is expected to endorse the outcome of last year's ECA-organized African Development Forum 2000, which called, in part, for a continental strategy for the comprehensive care and treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS, including a "determined Pan-African approach to the affordability of drugs."