On the day a UN Report states that some progress is being made in the West in relation to HIV/ Aids, the situation in Africa is quite the opposite.
As reported, graphically, in this article in the NY Times the HIV/Aids toll in Africa is grim:
"In the early years of AIDS, the virus didn't get attention because the victims were marginalized people: gays, Haitians and hemophiliacs.
Then when AIDS did threaten mainstream America, it finally evoked empathy and research dollars. But now it has slipped back in our consciousness because once more the primary victims are marginalized people - this time, Africans.
Nearly 3 million people die from AIDS each year. Among them are half a million children under the age of 15, mostly Africans infected during childbirth."
The article, only available against subscription, concludes as follows:
"In the 14th century, we didn't know how to fight the Plague. Today we know what to do, and we have the tools to overcome AIDS - and yet we still don't use them. A $4 dose of a medicine called nevirapine mostly blocks mother-to-child transmission of HIV during childbirth, and yet because of poverty and governmental incompetence, at last count only 10 percent of pregnant African women with the virus got such a drug.
Maybe that's the saddest thing of all. Twenty-five years after we allowed AIDS to spin out of control because its victims were marginalized people, we're doing the same thing all over again. And so today, as every day, another 7,900 people will die of AIDS."
As reported, graphically, in this article in the NY Times the HIV/Aids toll in Africa is grim:
"In the early years of AIDS, the virus didn't get attention because the victims were marginalized people: gays, Haitians and hemophiliacs.
Then when AIDS did threaten mainstream America, it finally evoked empathy and research dollars. But now it has slipped back in our consciousness because once more the primary victims are marginalized people - this time, Africans.
Nearly 3 million people die from AIDS each year. Among them are half a million children under the age of 15, mostly Africans infected during childbirth."
The article, only available against subscription, concludes as follows:
"In the 14th century, we didn't know how to fight the Plague. Today we know what to do, and we have the tools to overcome AIDS - and yet we still don't use them. A $4 dose of a medicine called nevirapine mostly blocks mother-to-child transmission of HIV during childbirth, and yet because of poverty and governmental incompetence, at last count only 10 percent of pregnant African women with the virus got such a drug.
Maybe that's the saddest thing of all. Twenty-five years after we allowed AIDS to spin out of control because its victims were marginalized people, we're doing the same thing all over again. And so today, as every day, another 7,900 people will die of AIDS."
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