Dan Rather EIGHTY-FIVE MILLION. It's a big number, more than 1 per cent of the total world population. Eighty-five million is what world health experts say will be the total number of cases of HIV/AIDS in eight years, if the epidemic continues its terrible advance.
Twenty-five million - also a big number. By the end of the decade, that's the number of children worldwide that the United Nations believes will be growing up having lost one or more parents to AIDS.
These figures are terrifying, in purely human terms, and in view of their larger social implications.
In its fiercest years in the 14th century, the bubonic plague (Black Death) is believed to have killed about 25 million people in Europe. Over all the centuries that the Black Death has ravaged the earth, it is estimated to have killed 50 million. AIDS has already killed that many. And by 2011, AIDS threatens to infect nearly twice that number at one time.
True, new drugs can transform HIV/AIDS from a life-threatening disease to a chronic one, and they can prevent mother-to-child infections. These drugs offer hope, but they are available to too few with the disease. With 95 per cent of HIV/AIDS cases occurring in the developing world, the regions with the highest and fastest-growing rates of infection happen to be those where these treatments are least available. This is as tragic as it is unsurprising, and it leaves much room for life-saving improvement.
A full 70 per cent of the worldwide HIV/AIDS cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the statistics of misery stagger the imagination. Seven southern African nations now have infection rates over 20 per cent; in Botswana, nearly 40 per cent of the population is HIV-positive. Of the next 10 people you see, imagine that four are infected with the disease that's life in Botswana.
Dealing with AIDS is about compassion and concern for human life. But it's also about a lot more. In some African countries, the average life expectancy has dipped under 40 years, and school populations have dropped by as much as a quarter. The mounting toll is tearing at the very fabric of these societies, causing labour shortages, deepening poverty and destroying educational opportunity. The effect has been the virtual destabilisation of a continent and a reversal of the past half-century of development.
Among the regions where HIV/AIDS is now making the biggest advances are China, India and the countries of the former Soviet Union huge population centres with inadequate health services, and nations of great geopolitical concern. The world can little afford instability in these places.
This is the defining crisis of our time. What will history say about us if we do not make every effort to address it? The medicine of medieval Europe had no way to deal with the bubonic plague, but we do have treatments for HIV/AIDS. If we fail to get these treatments to those who need them most because they lack the money to pay for them, history's verdict will be harsh indeed.
So what is being done? Not nearly enough, in most of the areas hardest hit by the epidemic. More discouraging still, social and political taboos in places such as India and China are providing another barrier to fighting the disease. The stigma and criminalisation of AIDS are the focus of this year's UNAIDS campaign.
As for the industrialised world, the United Nations estimates that $10 billion a year is needed to combat AIDS. That's a lot of money. But until the epidemic is brought under control, all other efforts toward peace, democracy and development will be compromised.
Ten billion dollars a year will prove a bargain, if it saves the millions.
Dan Rather is a television news anchor.
