By Citra Sidhu Aids is now the number one killer in eastern and northern Africa, according to a Unicef report.
Last year alone, 1.4 million Africans died from Aidsrelated diseases. "We are confronting a deadly virus that has ripped apart the social fabric of societies across Africa," said a Unicef spokesman.
Unicef has urged African leaders to make Aids eradication a priority and condemned Western governments' distortion of priorities (they have spent less than one per cent of the $40 billion expenditure on the recent Balkan war on combating Aids in Africa).
Cafod's HIV training officer Ann Smith said: "The countries worst affected by HIV/Aids are strangled by their desperate efforts to service the debts that are crippling their health and education services."
A hard-hitting Cafod report in May concluded that Aids patients need food and basic medicines even before radical new drugs to tackle their illness.