First Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda said Friday in Lusaka that high poverty levels in Africa were hampering the fight against HIV/AIDS.

"We need to fight poverty in order to defeat food insecurity and the AIDS pandemic," said Kaunda, who was speaking at the close of a three-day African conference discussing the dual epidemics of HIV/AIDS and food insecurity in Africa.

The former president, who is currently involved in programs fighting HIV/AIDS on the continent, said the food insecurity situation in most African countries was rendering people vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, adding that this was an issue that needs the urgent attention of governments and the private sector.

"When people are malnourished, they are not able to fight diseases effectively. Nutrition is therefore an important tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS," he said.

The former president also appealed for "action rather than high sounding pronouncements" in efforts aimed at fighting the pandemic.

Kaunda said there was need for the international community to act decisively in order to deal with the AIDS pandemic, which is posing a real threat to human existence, especially in Africa.

"The AIDS pandemic is therefore posing a serious challenge to our development efforts as there is no sector that has been spared, " he said.

According to figures obtained at the conference, about 25 million people died of AIDS by the end of 2005 while an estimated 40 million people are living with HIV, with the majority living in sub-Saharan Africa.

The African Union (AU) estimates that 27 percent of Africans are malnourished and that HIV/AIDS is increasingly driven by factors associated with malnutrition.

Source: Xinhua