Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — "This is a battle for our continent's survival," K.Y. Amoako, Under Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), said Sunday in an impassioned plea to an AIDS conference of political, civil society and youth leaders of Africa.

Addressing the opening session of the 2nd African Development Forum (ADF 2000) which will deliberate during the next five days on concerted action against HIV/AIDS, Amoako pointed out that the fight against the pandemic was not a policy issue but one that concerned "ourselves, our families, our communities, our hopes."

"AIDS - The Greatest Leadership Challenge," is the theme of the conference organised by ECA in conjunction with UNAIDS and its seven co-sponsors including the UNDP, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank.

Amoako reminded some 1,500 participants from over 40 African countries, including the Vice President of Malawi, Justin Malewezi, Nagoun Yamassoum, the prime minister of Chad, ministers, representatives of civil societies and people living with AIDS as well as representatives of international organisations, that Africa was now in the 14th year of the pandemic.

"The calls for arms have rung out with increasing frequency," he noted. But the pandemic continued to roll on, and this could not continue, he added.

"Africa must define its own response to this pandemic, and it must respond up to the scale of the challenge," he added.

Amoako stated that this required for the leadership at all levels in Africa to move into the open to check the spread of the killer disease and also to be in solidarity with those who carry HIV/AIDS.

He said what was needed was a committed leadership to do the very best to improve health systems, especially for mothers and children, "to assure that those with AIDS can work as long as they are able, and the leadership to make absolutely sure that AIDS orphans will not be lost to this world, but will be given decent and fully supportive chances.

"To all our leaders at every level in Africa, I say, this is our decisive time. we now face our threat: the survival of our people. it is our decisive time for greatness," he declared.

The ECA chief said that new strategies will emerge out of the present meeting in a form of "African consensus" on HIV/AIDS, to be followed up by a summit conference of African leaders in Abuja, Nigeria in April to be hosted by president Olusegun Obasanjo.

"We must resolve that this forum will shake the remaining complacency and ignorance about HIV/AIDS," Amoako told the gathering.

Ethiopian President Negasso Gidada on his part said the theme of the forum was of paramount importance to Africa's development.

He noted that HIV/AIDS was wreaking havoc on the human and material resources of sub-Sahara Africa which accounts for 25.3 million of the 36.1 million people infected with HIV/AIDS globally, amounting to nearly one in every 10 African adults.

"What is more, Africa is home to 70 percent of the adults and 80 percent of the children living with HIV, and has buried three-quarters of the more than 20 million people world-wide who have died of AIDS since the epidemic began, " he said, adding that the fight to check the spread of AIDS required collective mobilisation.

"Youth, women and people living with the HIV/AIDS should be at the forefront" of the multi-faceted struggle, he said.

In this respect, he noted that Ethiopia had established a National AIDS Council representing a wide spectrum of its society and allocated a modest budget to the council to undertake its activates at national, regional and grassroots levels.

Negasso expressed the hope that the forum would lead to the reaffirmation of the African leadership and all other stakeholders to their resolve for concrete actions to check the spread of the killer disease.