TODAY IN HISTORY: 25 NOVEMBER 1994; Nelson Mandela says AIDS threatens South Africa's future

On this day in 1994, a former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela in London, called for a new war against HIV/AIDS. He argued that AIDS is claiming more lives in Africa than the sum total of all wars, famines, floods, and other deadly diseases, such as malaria.

Speaking in London at the British Red Cross 2003 humanity lecture, the former South African president described HIV/AIDS as a "new war of global dimensions." He said: "AIDS represents a tragedy of unprecedented proportions, unfolding particularly in Africa but with incidence and effect across the globe. "It is devastating families and communities, overwhelming and depleting healthcare services, and robbing schools of both students and teachers."

He said HIV/AIDS is also undermining the fragile economies of sub-Saharan Africa. "Business has suffered losses of personnel, productivity, and profits. Economic growth is being undermined, and scarce development resources have to be diverted to deal with the consequences of the pandemic." AIDS is wiping out the developmental gains of the past decades and sabotaging the future, he told an audience of 700 people. 

Dr. Nelson Mandela also argued that the developed world must join the battle against AIDS more forcefully. "It is no less than a war—a world war that affects all of us ultimately. We are in this modern globalised world, each the keeper of our brother and sister.

The British Red Cross and Mandela's charitable organisation, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, are funding programmes to tackle HIV/AIDS in Africa. A report published by the British Red Cross in 1993, AIDS in Africa: Our Biggest Challenge Yet , revealed that at least 25 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living with HIV and that in some regions as many as one in four people were infected. 

The work of the British Red Cross and the Nelson Mandela Foundation focuses on reducing the stigma of HIV/AIDS, getting people to talk about the disease and discuss how to prevent infection, and providing home care for sick and dying people.