Another World AIDS Day
published: Friday | November 28, 2003
Dan Rather THIS THANKSGIVING, the Washington, D.C.-based organisation called Food & Friends delivered turkey with all the fixings to the many people suffering from AIDS and other illnesses to whom it delivers daily meals. It was a tremendously decent holiday act, and this, along with the organisation's everyday acts of kindness, seems to be exactly the sort of thing that Tommy Thompson, President Bush's secretary of Health and Human Services, had in mind when he called recently for "more volunteers to help care for the sick, to participate in public information and awareness campaigns, and to help spread the word on prevention and treatment."
Unfortunately, Food & Friends is but one group, doing its good work at a time when the United Nations has just released its estimate that a record 5 million people worldwide will become newly infected with the AIDS virus this year, and that a record 3 million people will die from it. These are the grim and growing numbers that serve as the backdrop for this year's 16th annual World AIDS Day, to be marked on Dec. 1.
As Food & Friends' efforts and Secretary Thompson's remarks make clear, the United States is far from immune from this epidemic, even though AIDS in America no longer seems to make big headlines. An estimated 900,000 people are HIV-positive, and it is guessed that as many as a third of those people do not realise that they are infected.
DEEP HOLD
But the AIDS epidemic in the United States pales before the full-blown crisis that has taken deep hold in sub-Saharan Africa. And it is to Africa that Secretary Thompson will go on this AIDS day, at the head of an 80-person delegation that will visit four nations in six days. Joining Secretary Thompson will be Ambassador Randall L. Tobias, who has been appointed U.S. global AIDS co-ordinator; former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, now president of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS; along with members of the health and humanitarian communities. Their mission is simple: to observe the toll that AIDS has taken on the Africa continent.
Less simple, though, is knowing just what to do about the human suffering and near-societal collapse they will find in the places hardest hit by AIDS. In many places in Africa, AIDS has gone from a disease that affects individuals to an all-encompassing drain on national economies and national will. People speak of a generation lost to the disease's ravages, and of present and future generations at risk.
President Bush has proposed $15 billion in funding to HIV/AIDS in Africa during the next five years, and if Africa is to find its way to stem the deadly tide of AIDS, it seems clear that this and other help from the Western world will be desperately needed.
Anyone who thinks that efforts to fight AIDS are purely a matter of charity might do well to consider the findings of the National Intelligence Council, a U.S.-government-sponsored think tank. The council has identified five strategically significant nations with large populations at risk from HIV/AIDS; of the five, three of the countries named are huge, nuclear powers Russia, India and China.
SELF-INTEREST
Clearly, there is a degree of enlightened self-interest involved in ensuring that these nations and their regions do not become destabilised. But in a season when we try to go beyond self-interest, we might all remember and try to learn from and act upon -- the example of Food & Friends. Because the sad and shocking statistics of another World AIDS Day cannot and should not be forgotten or brushed aside lightly.
