By the time you finish reading this sentence, somewhere in
Africa someone was just infected with AIDS, and by the end of the
day over 15,000 Africans will be infected with this deadly and
virulent disease.
For comparison sake, 15,000 is nearly half of the UCLA
undergraduate student population. Yet the truly horrible thing is
that the same thing will happen tomorrow, the next day and every
day after that.
The HIV/AIDS virus is decimating the African continent ““
over 29 million of the world’s 42 million AIDS victims live
in Sub-Saharan Africa. If the rate of infection continues to rise
at the same rate it has for the past 20 years, over 50 percent of
the teenagers living in Sub-Saharan Africa will die of AIDS before
their 50th birthday.
But these facts are only numbers on a page ““ numbers so
large they don’t seem real. To get an idea of the scope of
this pandemic, think of the Rose Bowl. Over 80,000 people can come
to watch the Bruins play football. Now, try to realize that it
would take over 60 full Rose Bowls to hold the number of people
that will be infected with AIDS this year alone.
What can we possibly do to fight against such a deadly foe?
Well, for starters, on Tuesday, President Bush signed a $15 billion
global AIDS bill designed to help combat the spread of AIDS in
Africa and the Caribbean. In doing so, Bush stated it was the
“moral duty” of the United States to fight AIDS around
the world because “we believe in the value and dignity of
every human life.”
There should be no cynicism or partisan criticism attached to
this incredible act of compassion, since it is by far the biggest
step taken by any government in the battle against AIDS. If this
bill lives up to its potential, it will prevent over 7 million new
infections, care for over 10 million AIDS victims and provide
intensive treatments to over 2 million people.
However, despite the enormous amount of good this bill will
accomplish, it is not nearly enough. Winning the war against AIDS
in Africa is infinitely more complex than just sending large sums
of money. It requires the much more difficult task of changing
deep-rooted cultural beliefs about women’s rights, government
and much more.
For example, because of cultural taboos against the education of
women, it is not uncommon for a woman to become a Commercial Sex
Worker, or prostitute, to support herself and her family. Lack of
education makes sex the only commodity many of these women have to
offer. A CSW might have 30 customers a week, many of whom are
truckers or migrant workers, and because of the mobile nature of
CSWs’ clients, an infected CSW can infect dozens of people
every year.
Only when women can receive the educational and employment
opportunities that are denied to them will this mode of infection
be halted.
Further compounding the difficulty of ridding Africa of AIDS is
the fact that over 40 million Africans are at risk of starvation.
It is impossible for a body to fight both AIDS and hunger at the
same time.
Yet if the attitudes of African governmental leaders were to
change, this problem could almost be eliminated overnight.
For example, in Ethiopia and many other African countries, it is
the man’s responsibility to handle the farm work. However,
large numbers of men have been killed in senseless wars fought
between neighboring countries. Since 1997, over 3.3 million people
in Congo alone (most of them men) have died because of the easily
preventable warfare that has racked their country. Nations simply
can’t successfully combat AIDS when violence and hunger are
draining their populations.
Issues such as widespread starvation and commonplace
prostitution seem alien to those living in the United States, but
these are some of the everyday problems that African men and women
face in the fight against AIDS. While the United States should
continue to financially support the war against AIDS, the United
States should also take a large role in establishing human rights
and attitudes of non-violence in Africa.
Eventually the war will be won, and Africa will no longer lose
millions to AIDS, but until then, there is a lot of work to be
done.