AIDS IN AFRICA (СПИД в Африке)
Iulia Pariniuc
Stoneleigh-Burnham School
Posted on 05/27/01
AIDS IN AFRICA:
AIDS is becoming one of the most
important problems of the modern world. According to “AIDS Epidemic
Update 2000” and the World Health Organization (WHO), the current number of people
living with HIV or AIDS is 36.1 million, more than 50% higher than predicted in
1991. And this number is increasing every day, hour and minute. The greatest
number of inhabitants sick with AIDS or HIV live in Africa. Over17 million
Africans have already died of AIDS-three times the number of AIDS deaths in the
rest of the world, orphaning 10 million or more African children. “The AIDS
situation in Africa is catastrophic and sub-Saharan Africa continues to head
the list as the world’s most affected region,” said Peter Piot, Executive
Director of UNAIDS. According to his report, estimated 3.8 million people
became infected with HIV in sub –Saharan Africa during the year, bringing the
total number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the region to 25.3 million, or
almost a million more than in 1999.
The reason of such great spread of
the disease is inadequate level of living and absence of needed education.
According to WHO, more than 50% of African population does not live a safe
sexual life, and the increase of number of drugs deteriorate the problem. For
example, according to Ministry of Health statistics, 2.2 million Kenyans are
ill with HIV, with average 500 deaths every day.
African medics do not want to show
medical results to their patients and to the government. They say that they do
not reveal HIV results to prevent the patients from fear of bad news. “Some
patients literally die hopelessly before their eyes”, they said. “Another
problem is that when some patients learn they are HIV positive, they go on
their rampage, despite the counseling we give them, said Matulumbu, an HIV/AIDS
specialist. The doctor, like his colleagues, said a number of patients even
took loans while others mortgaged family assets to use the money to spread the
disease. Such patients left their families double dilemma. Dr. Matulumbu said:
”We are facing a serious problem because medics are not trained on how to
counsel HIV patients, yet we are expected to be a counselor and a doctor at the
same time.”
The patients, HIV and AIDS positive
express discontent about the doctors curing them. If the owner of the factory,
a sick African is working for, finds out that the worker is sick, he
automatically dismiss him from his work job. The owners of the companies do not
want to deal with insurance of sick workers, and do not want to employ HIV/ADIS
patients. The reality is sad, but it is true. Patients hide their results of
HIV/AIDS tests, and it is difficult to determine the number of sick Africans.
AIDS is not a disease that can be
either determined or cured. The real number of people with HIV positive is not
known. Some of them do not want to talk about the disease, others simply do not
know they are sick.
To help in preventing AIDS, UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his speech at UN conference for Least
Developed Countries, proposed to organize a global AIDS fund to sponsor the
fight against AIDS. The world’s wealthy nations are allegedly holding off
donations to a proposed UN global health fund, arguing, there are not enough
guarantees that the money would be spend correctly, the Associated Press said
on May 19, 2001. Reporting from the UN conference for Least Developed Countries
in Brussels, AP said that "many countries" remained skeptical about
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's proposed US $7-10 billion fund to fight the
spread of AIDS and other infectious diseases. It quoted Poul Nielson, the
European Union's (EU) development commissioner as asking: "What will this
fund do better than what we are doing now?". "If we are just talking
about a global AIDS fund, we will not participate. It is too narrow," he
added. The EU reportedly wants the fund to include other transmittable diseases
and tie it to providing cheaper drugs for poorer countries.
The United States is the only large country to contribute to
the global fund so far, pledging US $200 million last week. That contribution
was criticized by, among others, the US-based Health Gap Coalition as
"paltry". The coalition called for Washington to allocate US $2
billion in new money. (See www.healthgap.org)
Annan said on Thursday in Geneva that the
proposed fund would be a major tool for economic growth in the developing
countries. He said that plans for the fund are progressing. He noted that the
fund should be governed by an independent board, made up of stakeholders
including governments from both donor and developing countries, NGOs, the
private sector and the United Nations. The running of the fund should be done
through a small secretariat, which would draw on a technical advisory body made
up of international experts in the fields of health and development. Addressing
concerns that the proposed fund would pull money away from existing health
programs, Annan stressed that the fund must be additional to existing funds and
mechanisms, not just a new way of channeling money that is already earmarked
for development.
Although working, the efforts of the United
Nations are not enough without actual financial support they ask for. There is
still a great need in money and people to fight AIDS in African countries. The
UN pledges for the support from economically developed countries to help less
developed ones. It is extremely important that the society fights this crucial
disease, for it does not belong only to Africans, but to all the inhabitants of
the earth. Therefore it is everyone’s problem. People with HIV/AIDS did not
choose to be sick. It is time to start helping them before it is too late.