AIDS pandemic

AIDS Will Cut Life Expectancy Below 40 In 11 African Countries is a discussion on Plastic about the article Africans ‘faced with extinction’… on the National Post (Canada). One comment in the discussion, But How Many Of Them Actually Have AIDS??? points out that the World Health Organization’s definition of AIDS is the “Bangui definition”, which can often diagnose AIDS where it is probably, in fact, Dysentary, Turburculosis, Malaria, generalized Kaposi sarcoma or cryptococcal meningitis.

Whereas a misdiagnosis as AIDS is misleading, the other diseases mentioned above are hardly less fatal in Africa. What (s)he seems to be saying is that the World Health Organization is deliberately using a loose definition of AIDS in order to garner international support for helping illness in Africa since AIDS is a ‘popular’ disease, unlike TB or malaria. Whereas this is an interesting theory (and may have some basis in truth), it doesn’t change the fact that “[t]he average life expectancy of people in 11 African countries will drop below 40 by 2010” and that “[i]n five African countries, deaths will outstrip births by 2010, meaning falling populations.” The hardest hit countries, Botswana and Mozambique, have an “average life expectancy [that] will drop to just 27 years”.

U.S. Blasted for AIDS Efforts… in the New York Newsday reports that the western world isn’t doing enough to help stop this epidemic in Africa and other underdeveloped parts of the world. Protesters rallied at the “14th International Conference on AIDS” fighting against the low level “…of U.S. contributions to the Global Fund for AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis; the high prices of U.S.-made anti-HIV drugs…”

The protesters feel that the U.S., with “40 percent of the total gross national product of the wealthy world”, should be contributing more to help stop these diseases around the world. This is one of those things that’s worth spending money on. The U.S. military budget is slated to be $500 Billion next year. 10% of that would suffice to fix most of Africa’s health problems. The initial attack on Afghanistan cost $42 Billion. That right there could have been spent better, solving health and hunger problems in the third world.

But the U.S. government basically doesn’t care. The third world is just a set of client nations and can never aspire to better…U.S. and European citizens have their drug cocktails, so there’s no more AIDS problem, right? It doesn’t matter that Africa can’t save itself and 20th century colonialism and neo-imperialism had a lot to do with that. The U.S. believes in ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’, so Africa should save itself and will emerge stronger for it. Too bad there’s no other nations left for Africa to take advantage of in order to better emulate the West’s rise to first world status.