Kaunda fighting all-out against HIV-AIDS

ZAMBIA’S founding President Kenneth Kaunda has appealed to African leaders to become more pro-active in public HIV-AIDS awareness campaigns.

Describing the pandemic as one of the “most devastating health crises of our time”, Kaunda said in Windhoek on Friday that ignorance, illiteracy and poverty were major contributing factors to the spread of the disease. Leaders, he said, were well placed to address the problems and for this reason political will was pivotal to public awareness campaigns.”Can we leave out leaders in our governments, in our churches and indeed in may other areas of our human endeavour! We are losing them all to this AIDS pandemic,” Kaunda said, waving a symbol that has become synonymous with him – a starched white handkerchief.Kaunda was in Windhoek at the invitation of the Polytechnic of Namibia on the occasion of its 2004 HIV-AIDS awareness campaign under the theme ‘Protect the Youth, They are the Future’.Kaunda also participated in a panel discussion, broadcast live on national radio, to discuss the issue of HIV-AIDS in tertiary education institutions.The campaign is aimed not only at increasing awareness and understanding of the pandemic, but also at mitigating the impact of the pandemic on students and staff of the institution.Addressing students and staff, Kaunda took a deeply spiritual stance to drive home the importance of public awareness of the disease, opening his remarks by singing, “Step by step, I will follow Jesus.”Kaunda said Africans owed it to their creator to prevent new infections and prolong the lives of those already infected.He advocated abstinence from sex as the best form of protection from infection.”It is important that in our discussions with our youth, we emphasise the importance of abstinence.For those not yet infected, we hammer on the importance of abstinence.We must go to every corner of this continent to spread this message of abstinence,” he said.The former president said that the challenge of fighting the disease was “more serious than we think”, and said the need to intensify the campaign throughout Africa could not be over-emphasised.In a bid to eradicate the stigma associated with the disease, Kaunda attributed the death of his son Masuzyo Kaunda in 1986 to HIV-AIDS causes.In 2000, he established and still heads the Kenneth Kaunda Children of Africa Foundation aimed at mitigating the impact of HIV-AIDS on children, encouraging voluntary HIV testing and openness about the disease.In 2002, he underwent an HIV-AIDS test, saying that had he tested positive, he would have used the status to fight the pandemic.Leaders, he said, were well placed to address the problems and for this reason political will was pivotal to public awareness campaigns.”Can we leave out leaders in our governments, in our churches and indeed in may other areas of our human endeavour! We are losing them all to this AIDS pandemic,” Kaunda said, waving a symbol that has become synonymous with him – a starched white handkerchief.Kaunda was in Windhoek at the invitation of the Polytechnic of Namibia on the occasion of its 2004 HIV-AIDS awareness campaign under the theme ‘Protect the Youth, They are the Future’.Kaunda also participated in a panel discussion, broadcast live on national radio, to discuss the issue of HIV-AIDS in tertiary education institutions.The campaign is aimed not only at increasing awareness and understanding of the pandemic, but also at mitigating the impact of the pandemic on students and staff of the institution.Addressing students and staff, Kaunda took a deeply spiritual stance to drive home the importance of public awareness of the disease, opening his remarks by singing, “Step by step, I will follow Jesus.”Kaunda said Africans owed it to their creator to prevent new infections and prolong the lives of those already infected.He advocated abstinence from sex as the best form of protection from infection.”It is important that in our discussions with our youth, we emphasise the importance of abstinence.For those not yet infected, we hammer on the importance of abstinence.We must go to every corner of this continent to spread this message of abstinence,” he said.The former president said that the challenge of fighting the disease was “more serious than we think”, and said the need to intensify the campaign throughout Africa could not be over-emphasised.In a bid to eradicate the stigma associated with the disease, Kaunda attributed the death of his son Masuzyo Kaunda in 1986 to HIV-AIDS causes.In 2000, he established and still heads the Kenneth Kaunda Children of Africa Foundation aimed at mitigating the impact of HIV-AIDS on children, encouraging voluntary HIV testing and openness about the disease.In 2002, he underwent an HIV-AIDS test, saying that had he tested positive, he would have used the status to fight the pandemic.