African heads of state were absent from the opening ceremony of the 11th international conference on AIDS in Lusaka last night.
Not one of the invited leaders attended the event, not even the head of the host country, Zambian President Frederick Chiluba.
Until yesterday, President Chiluba had been expected to officially inaugurate the conference. No official explanation was given for his absence, and the 5,000 delegates were instead addressed by the Zambian Vice President, Mr Christone Tembo.
More than 80 per cent of the AIDS deaths in the world have occurred in Africa, where the 21 countries with the highest HIV prevalence are located.
Over the next five days, the delegates are to brainstorm in search of practical ways to bring about a reversal of the AIDS problem, which has left 11 million dead and 22.5 million infected on the continent since the outbreak of the epidemic in the mid-1980s.
In a declaration read at the end of a four-hour opening ceremony, delegates declared: "HIV/AIDS is a national disaster in our countries requiring an emergency response."
Speaker after speaker urged political leaders to give serious attention to the problem.
Many lamented that political will for the struggle with AIDS on the continent was lacking at a time when, in some countries, one in three and one in two people were infected.
The UNAIDS executive director, Mr Peter Piot, said that each day last year saw 16,000 new HIV infections and half of them were experienced by young people.
Mr Piot said by end of last year, more than 33 million people - a number that exceeds the entire population of Canada - were living with HIV in Africa.
The World Health Organisation's director for Africa, Mr Ibrahim Samba, said on his arrival in the Zambian capital late on Saturday that the disease which threatens to decimate the African population should be declared a global "super disaster".
The World Bank in a statement called on African leaders to put the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa high on their national agendas.
"It is a puzzle that millions of dollars can be spent on guns by African states when there is no money for health, for AIDS," Mr Moustapha Gueye, director of the African Council of AIDS Service Organisations, told the conference.