What will it take to slow AIDS toll in Africa?
By Pam Parker
On the eve of the 13th International AIDS Conference in
Durban, South Africa, a June 27 report by the United Nations
World Health Organization revealed the appalling extent of
the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa.
Some 34.3 million people are infected with the HIV virus
in sub-Saharan Africa.
Some 71 percent of the world's HIV-infected population
lives in South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe,
Lesotho, Zambia, Namibia, Malawi and Kenya.
It's estimated that only 2 percent of those people have
access to life-extending drug therapies, or even to drugs
that treat the secondary diseases that accompany AIDS.
In South Africa 3.6 million people, or 8.6 percent of the
population, are infected.
The UN estimates that 50 percent of all girls in Kenya now
15 years old will be infected in their lifetimes.
In Botswana two thirds of all today's 15 year olds will
eventually die of AIDS. This means that in 20 years there
could be more people in their 60s and 70s than in their 40s
and 50s in that country.
Such a huge death rate usually happens only during a major
war, and then affects mostly the adult male population.
Last year AIDS surpassed all other causes of death in
Africa.
AIDS spreading where poverty
is greatest
AIDS has taken its toll in many Latin American and Asian
countries as well. The Caribbean nations have been hit
hardest. In some areas of Haiti 13 percent of pregnant women
are infected with the virus. The exception is socialist Cuba,
where the rate of infection is just .03 percent.
The African National Congress was confronted with the
gloomy forecast of the AIDS epidemic at roughly the same time
it was taking power from the apartheid regime. The ANC
recognized that this could be a huge health crisis.
An ANC health officer stated that "we could see AIDS all
around us in the countries where we were in exile and we were
already seeing some HIV-positive comrades."
In 1990, shortly after Nelson Mandela was released from
prison, the ANC convened a conference in Mozambique. Chris
Hani, who headed the ANC's guerrilla force, Umkhonto we
Sizwe, said the South African people "cannot afford to allow
the AIDS epidemic to ruin the realization of our dreams."
The ANC leadership saw the need for aggressive control of
the epidemic. But they were burdened with an inadequate
health care apparatus inherited from the apartheid
regime.
As part of an agreement with the apartheid National Party,
the ANC had agreed to keep on civil servants who had been in
office before the democratic revolution. During their tenure,
however, a government AIDS program had been virtually
nonexistent.
This decision left the new government with "people who
could care less if Black people died from AIDS," according to
the director of the AIDS program in Pretoria.
"I don't know how you get a national AIDS program to work
when you've inherited a civil service that you don't trust,
and who doesn't trust you" says Glenda Gray, a senior
researcher at Chris Hani Hospital in Soweto.
In the countryside, where most Africans live, some people
didn't get word of the disease until 20 years into the
epidemic. Superstition, the oppression of women and the
introduction of Christianity--which has added a layer of
shame to the discussion of sexexacerbated the spread of the
disease.
What it will take
What will it take to slow the spread of AIDS in Africa?
Hundreds of millions of dollars for youth-focused education,
aggressive treatment of other sexually-transmitted diseases,
wide distribution of condoms, low-cost or free life-extending
drugs, low-cost or free drugs that minimize the risk for the
spread of the disease from mother to baby, and intensive
counseling--just to start.
These measures are proven to work in the fight against
AIDS. Many countries have prevented an epidemic or slowed the
disease's progression by these means. The African nations of
Senegal and Uganda are among them.
So why do the wealthy capitalist countries have such
blatant indifference to the spread of AIDS in Africa? They
knew the scourge was coming for many years. They also knew
there was a means to control it.
In 1990 the CIA released an Interagency Intelligence
Memorandum (IIM 91-10005) on the growth of AIDS in Africa.
The study went to the White House and every cabinet-level
agency.
According to its author, Kenneth Brown, the document was
met with "indifference." He waited several months for the
flurry of briefings that generally accompany the release of
major intelligence documents, but Brown's study was met with
silence.
Brown went on to say that "many in the intelligence
community felt that the continent was overpopulated
anyway."
During this same period the World Health Organization
projected a death toll of tens of millions of people in
Africa by the year 2000--but did nothing.
Imperialism with its weapons of racism and sexism was
undoubtedly a factor in the decision of the West to turn its
back on Africa.
By early 1990 U.S. officials felt that AIDS would "not be
a major heterosexual epidemic in the United States," said
Michael Mann of the WHO.
"AIDS is no longer a threat to the West," Mann said. He
concluded, "the bottom line is that the epidemic could rage
on in Africa, and we could control it here... Do we really
need Africa?" Washington Post, July 5.
According to William Foege, a former official of the
Centers for Disease Control: "You must tie the needs of the
poor to the fears of the rich. When the rich lose their fear,
they are no longer willing to invest in the needs of the
poor."
An internal study by the World Bank's Population and Human
Resources Department tries to find some good in all this,
stating, "If the only effect of the AIDS epidemic was to
reduce the population growth rate, it would increase the
growth rate of per capita income in any plausible economic
model."
The report cites the bubonic plague epidemic in the 14th
century as an example of this.
White South African economist Alan Whiteside called it the
"silver lining to the plague."
Duff Gillespie, who oversaw AIDS assistance as director of
the U.S. Agency for International Development program on
population health and nutrition, argued that "overpopulation,
not AIDS, was the most important problem in Africa"--even
though Africa has a lower population density than Europe or
Asia.
Gillespie went on to say that it would be "wrong to
suppose that such decisions were based on gross ignorance or
morally bankrupt." He said the lack of resources made
available to combat the spread of HIV was "simply the product
of a different world view and set of priorities." (Washington
Post, July 5)
Despite their blatant disregard for the devastating
effects of AIDS in Africa, however, the Clinton
administration, the IMF and other Western institutions have
been forced to offer some relief thanks to the tremendous
pressure placed on them by the militant AIDS movement here
and abroad.
Miminal U.S. aid
But the relief has been minimal. The U.S. has increased
its world AIDS budget to $450 million--about one third of the
military aid package Congress just passed for Colombia. A few
of the big pharmaceutical companies have lowered the price of
drugs to these developing nations--but they are still far out
of reach for most people.
An IMF program that is supposed to afford relief to what
are called Highly Indebted Poor Countries has been
ineffective. The UN began a modest program targeting
teenagers. It would have provided information and condoms to
young people. But these efforts were thwarted by those who
believed they would have jeopardized the organization's
relationship with the Vatican, which opposes birth
control.
If the industrialized nations were serious about ending
the spread of AIDS, they could cancel Africa's debt to the
banks and the IMF. It's been estimated that it would take
$2.5 billion to stop the growth of AIDS in Africa. Africa
owes roughly $100 billion, and pays $10 billion per year in
interest.
Isn't the real debt the one owed by the rich capitalist
countries that plundered Africa of its people and its raw
materials for centuries? Shouldn't the means to end this
deadly scourge come from the class of wealthy parasites in
the U.S. and Europe who have put a chain of debt around the
necks of the African people?
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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