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[Odler]

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The news from the AIDS epidemics sounds fantastic.

HIV-infected individuals are no longer sentenced to death; they are no longer AIDS victims. AIDS itself is now a chronic disease, as diabetes and hypertension are. You see your physician monthly, you take your medications as prescribed; you do well. Most people around you will die much earlier than you will.

The rate of infection seems to level off. The number of people living with HIV in the United States and Western Europe is, and has been, around 1.5 million. The disease is contained. The demographics have changed. HIV infection has become rare in the upper, educated classes, the ones that use condoms. The new infections are more common in women and minority, and most common in minority women (black and Hispanic).

Treating/containing HIV is nowadays much easier. From the one-drug pharmacopoeia (AZT) of ten years ago, we can today choose among at least 15 medications, from different classes. And the number is growing. More, a vaccine is in the works.

Anti-retroviral medications are at a bargain price. The cost of a year treatment dropped from 20,000 dollars to 400 dollars! In some contexts, it is more expensive to control hypertension than HIV. This is the result of a capitalistic equation balanced on supply (increasing) and demand (shrinking).

The world sighs with relief; the horizon looks clear.

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Unfortunately, the above snapshot is a photo-op for the first world. In third world countries, the disease that started 22 years ago, as a California homosexual plague is now a major public health concern, an ominous factor of social, and economic destabilization.

Let?s say it: there is a genocide going in southern Africa and in the Far East. Eastern Europe is not far behind. AIDS, as a pandemic, has become the deadliest weapon of mass destruction, a catastrophe happening as we speak. But no media outlet is on location to dramatically report on it.

In the whole wide world, 42 millions carry the virus: 29.4 millions of them live in Africa, 6 millions in Southeast Asia, ½ million in the Caribbean, 1.5 million in Latin America. By comparison, only 15,000 cases are recorded in Australia and New Zealand.

If you read the United Nations report on the matter (not that you should), you know by now that, in 2002 alone, five million people got infected worldwide; 45,000 in the U.S, but 3.5 millions (80 times more) in Sub-Sahara Africa.

As a consequence, 2 out of 3 people with HIV live now in black Africa. Prevalence: 1 out 11 African is HIV positive. In some countries, the rate is 1 out of 3. The death toll is extraordinarily high. No cataclysm has ever poised to decimate so many Africans. The wonder drugs are not available on the continent. Even 400 dollars a year are astronomical, unaffordable for people who live on less than a dollar a day.

Considering the contribution of war, famine, ignorance and poverty, and the fact that HIV hits the young, the beautiful, and the productive, the outlook is bleak. Already, children go to schools where there are no teachers, and come back to homes where there are no parents.

Help is coming from nowhere. In Malawy, Medecins Sans Frontieres have launched a prevention and treatment program. But with no money, and no drug, little can be achieved.

For the first time, the United States of America seem to be aware of the tragedy. In his recent State of the Union Speech, President Bush proposed a 10-billion dollar anti-HIV package for Africa and the Caribbean. Not only the aid is yet to be approved by a Republican congress (therefore unlikely to become reality), it is, by any mean, too little too late.

Bush said that money would take care of 1.2 million HIV patients. What do 1.2 millions represent out of 3.5 new infections a year, in the face of 30 million established cases?

The price tag of the war and occupation of Iraq, 400 billion dollars, is the kind of money Africa would need to fight the disease. Repeat: AIDS is now the deadliest weapon of mass destruction, unlike a potential nuclear device or any other biological agent. It should be dealt with as such.

If the trend continues, in 50 years, sub-Sahara Africa will be depopulated. The black race will be extinct.

These are food for thought on this first day of a month earmarked to the celebration of love and Africanism.

Please visit: http://www.jeanlouie.com/

(Odler Robert Jeanlouie, Saturday, February 01, 2003)