The HIV/AIDS ante was upped during the 4^th Ordinary General Assembly of the Organization of African First Ladies Against Aids (OAFLAA) in Banjul, when the First Lady of The Gambia, Mrs. Zainab Y. Jammeh, described the Killer disease as the “greatest threat to the security and development of Africa, and a big obstacle to the attainment of a number of globally-agreed Millennium Development Goals.”

Mrs Jammeh noted that since the 1980s, fifty million people have been infected with HIV in Africa and that twenty million of those were either in their productive years or have already died. The statistics are staggering for Africa, she said, “out of the five million new infections recorded globally in 2005, 3.2 million were from sub-Saharan Africa.”

The Moroccan born Mrs. Jammeh lashed at the conspiracy of silence and the stigmatization of HIV/AIDS infected people as contributing factors to the spread of the disease. “Conflicts and wars, which are the root causes of instability and breakdown of social order, lead to a further spread of HIV/Aids,” she explained.