Southern African Leaders to Hold AIDS Summit

Heads of state from 14 southern African countries will meet in Lesotho on July 4 to discuss ways to combat the AIDS epidemic, officials said on Friday. All the states, members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have been hard hit by HIV/AIDS and none has successfully reduced infection rates. The Lesotho summit marks the first time HIV/AIDS has been discussed by so many of the region's leaders. "By sharing our experiences in care, treatment and education about HIV/AIDS, we might be able to come up with a successful common strategy," said Esther Kanaimba, spokesperson for the SADC secretariat in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. The United Nations Development Program estimates that 40 percent of HIV infections worldwide are in the SADC area, which comprises around one percent of the world's population. The participating countries are Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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