AFRO-NETS> Why focus on Iraq and not AIDS?

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Why focus on Iraq and not AIDS?
-------------------------------

A puzzle for future historians. By Sebastian Mallaby


WASHINGTON
A century from now, when historians write about our era, one question 
will dwarf all others, and it won't be about finance or politics or 
even terrorism. - The question will be, simply, how could a rich and 
civilized society allow a known and beatable enemy to kill millions 
of people?

The enemy, of course, is the HIV virus, and the unnecessary stupidity 
of its slaughter. The central message is that AIDS can be beaten 
back. There is no reason why the plague should have killed 3 million 
last year; nor why it should now be advancing quickly into China and 
India. Yet this monstrous destruction proceeds because not enough 
people have been shocked into revolt.

Here, surely, is the puzzle for future historians. How could we 
Americans, a society with the technology to land a missile on Saddam 
Hussein, not mobilize the science necessary to defeat the scourge? 
How could the United States, a nation that spends $10 billion a year 
on soaps and perfumes, give $1 billion in public money annually for 
battling the virus and regard that as enough? How is it that we have 
known about AIDS for two decades yet only now are starting to react?

Some say reaction is hopeless, but that is wrong. Uganda has driven 
the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women in its capital down from 
30 percent to 11 percent during the past decade. Senegal, Brazil and 
Thailand all have had some success in fighting off the virus. AIDS 
need not advance unchallenged. It is an optional catastrophe.

So why do we mobilize for an Iraq war that may cost more than $100 
billion, even as we offer $1 billion a year to fight a scourge 
equivalent to 2 1/2 Sept. 11s every day? It's partly that Iraq seems 
to threaten us more directly, but "seem" is the operative word here. 
If AIDS is allowed to kill one in three Africans, the failed states 
and power vacuums that result are bound to harm U.S. interests. And 
if the United States stands back and lets this happen, its moral 
claim to global leadership will have been undermined.

The real reason for our muted reaction is that AIDS is silent, re-
petitive and boring.

New infections are occurring at a rate of 5 million per year. The 
spread can be contained, but this isn't happening in most places. 
People can be treated, but only 1 percent of HIV-positive Africans 
are receiving drugs.

The Washington Post

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