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Less than one dollar per capita is spent on fighting HIV/AIDS in six African countries interviewed by the AIDS Law Project. These figures were revealed by Mark Heywood of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies and the Treatment Action Campaign at the 2nd African Conference on the Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. He reacted to a call from one of the conference delegates that African leaders should get more recognition for their achievements regarding HIV/AIDS. ‘Such spending indicates that there is no political leadership regarding this epidemic. All these countries have signed or ratified key international human rights covenants, but it seems as if most fail to apply these agreements,’ says Heywood. In his formal paper to the conference he provided a summary of HIV/AIDS legislation in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The study of the six countries, done in 2002, concluded that in five of six countries there was little legislation that referred directly to HIV/AIDS. It also stated that gender inequality was a major problem which fuelled the epidemic and that the criminalisation of homosexuality, sex work and the disregard of the gay and lesbian population exacerbated the epidemic. Over 400 delegates, mostly from Africa, are attending the four day conference, hosted by the HSRC in Cape Town.
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