| 3. HIV/AIDS: From a health to a development crisis |
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On the 5th of May 2000, the President of the US declared that the "global spread of HIV constitutes a national security threat" and in the same year the United Nations Security Council made a similar call.
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These striking statements encapsulate how HIV/AIDS has gone from being unknown before 1982 to a pandemic which threatens global peace and development two decades later. During this time it has become increasingly apparent that HIV/AIDS was not just another infectious disease that needed to be handled by Ministries of Health but rather the epidemic requires a massive, multi-sectoral, broad-front effort if the disease itself and its impacts are to be brought under control.
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The statement that HIV/AIDS is no longer only a health crisis but a development crisis is very much in vogue and is in such widespread usage as to be a clichР№. However, in spite of this realisation, it is only slowly that policy is turning into concrete action. In most countries, it is still the Ministry of Health that leads the struggle against HIV/AIDS but increasingly over-arching national initiatives are taking this responsibility and each sector is being mandated with developing sector-specific HIV/AIDS plans.
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The impacts of HIV/AIDS on development are becoming increasingly apparent whether measured in terms of human development or on the more traditional indicators of economic development. So devastating are these impacts on Africa in particular that this single disease threatens to undermine decades of incremental improvement on the African continent and will potentially derail the much hoped for "African Renaissance". These impacts are discussed in detail below.
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