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May 12th
AIDS in Africa and the latest achievements of
anti-retroviral therapy in a continent where already 30 million people are
affected by HIV/AIDS, shall be the focus of the International Conference
promoted by the Community of Sant'EGidio on May 12th, 2004, at the Auditorium
Roma-Parco della Musica (via de Coubertin, 30), starting in the morning at
9.00 a.m.
DREAM is the name of the program promoted by
the Community of Sant'Egidio in Mozambique and other African Countries. This
program has made the entire anti-retroviral therapy accessible free of charge
to people with AIDS, and it has started an innovative intervention to
interrupt mother-to-child transmission of the virus. DREAM has harvested the
best results in whole Sub-Saharan Africa in the field of therapy and it has
become a repeatable model, which may become one of the most effective keys to
respond to the terrible tragedy striking the continent. DREAM is spreading to
other six African Countries and it is becoming the largest world intervention
against AIDS in Africa for amount of people reached by the therapy.
The scientific results, the range and
characteristics of the programk, shall be discussed together with the chief
people responsible for tackling AIDS in Africa.
Among others, eleven African Health Ministers (from
Central African Republic, Cote D'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique,
Republic of Congo, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania and Togo), the AIDS responsible
from the World Health Organization, Paulo Texeira, from the World Bank, from
the National Italian reference Institute for AIDS, Spallanzani, together with
the Cardinal president of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care,
Barrag�n, shall discuss with the people responsible for DREAM and of the
Community of Sant'Egidio about the faults of international policies in
tackling epidemics and on crucial initiatives to be activated in short time.
Drug costs, therapeutic approach, intervention
models, shall be different chapters of the international conference,
representing a moment of balance.
Rome shall be an international crossroads for
proposals and for a world appeal to start a new phase in the fight against the
AIDS pandemic.
May 13th
In the morning of May 13th, at 10.30 a.m., in
the headquarters of the Community of Sant'Egidio, at the presence of the
international press, the Ministers of the African Countries present in Rome
for the International Conference shall publicly and solemnly sign an Appeal
addressed to the leaders of the main European powers for urgent initiatives to
be implemented to save the African continent.
At 12.00 a.m. the President of the Republic of
Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, shall receive participants and representatives of
African governments at the Palazzo del Quirinale.
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