Kenneth Kaunda, former president of Zambia

"Children are the future of any country," said Kaunda. "Their well-being should be a concern to all."

Approximately 42 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, and 30 million of them are in Africa, according to UNAIDS and the World Health Organization. As Max Essex, chair of the Harvard AIDS Institute (HAI), outlined in his introductory remarks, infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa are 50 to 300 times higher than those in Europe or Asia.

Related statistics are staggering. Approximately 80 percent of HIV-positive women and 90 percent of HIV-positive infants live in sub-Saharan Africa, said Essex. As a result, it is extremely important that research, training, prevention, education, and treatment efforts emphasize needs in Africa, he said.

Essex also described the opening this year of the largest laboratory dedicated to HIV and AIDS research in Africa. Located in Botswana, the state-of-the-art lab resulted from a collaboration between HAI and the Botswana government. The collaboration is set to launch trials early next year for a vaccine to protect against the HIV-1C strain of the AIDS virus.

Kaunda outlined key areas for addressing the AIDS epidemic in Africa. He said that the stigma of HIV infection needs to be removed for progress to proceed. Kaunda has personally worked towards that goal. Last spring, he himself took a public HIV/AIDS test to raise awareness about voluntary counseling and testing. The test results were negative.

Mother-to-child transmission of HIV should be reduced so that there are fewer children born with the AIDS virus, he said.

He said that family and community environments must be improved and destructive behaviors discouraged.

Improvements in providing for basic needs will aid the economy and bolster health, he said. Children, families, and communities require access to food, clean water, sanitation, health care, and education.

Prevention efforts need to be stressed, particularly with children who need to learn how to protect themselves. Kaunda is a vocal advocate of condom use to prevent HIV transmission.

Medical treatments should be affordable–and not just for AIDS. Kaunda cited the devastating toll of opportunistic infections and of diseases such as malaria in Africa.

Kaunda concluded that developed and developing nations can learn from each other–that knowledge and experience does not flow only from the West to Africa. He then led the crowd in an empowering song, repeating the refrain, "We shall fight and conquer AIDS."

Harvard University Provost Steven Hyman also spoke at the event. He said that, while there are already several large projects at Harvard focused on AIDS, more can be done. Recruiting more international students to the university will aid future cross-national partnerships, he said. Harvard should also increase its focus on conducting top-notch research and collaborating across departments and schools to push knowledge about the epidemic.

Kaunda’s and Hyman’s lectures capped an event that included an overview of African countries with Harvard programs, three panel discussions, and a poster session.

"Harvard Programs on AIDS in Africa–A University Responds" was facilitated by: HAI; Harvard Medical School (HMS) Division of AIDS; the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at HMS; the HSPH Departments of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Nutrition, and Population and International Health; the Division of Public Health Practice; the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights; the Committee on African Studies; the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital; and Partners AIDS Research Center.

For more information about the event or the Harvard AIDS Institute, visit www.hsph.harvard.edu/hai.