It's still November 30 as I write this, but for most of the world it's already December 1: World AIDS Day. An excerpt from Dr. Margaret Chan's message:
The first World AIDS Day was staged by WHO in 1988, at a time when the world was waking up to this disease and its multiple catastrophic impact. Since then, the face of the epidemic has changed in significant ways, and we are gaining better insight every day.
Some trends have been positive. Leaders in most countries are fully awake to the threat. Awareness has brought commitment, and resources continue to increase, including for the development of new tools.
This year’s report on the epidemic, jointly prepared by UNAIDS and WHO, indicates that HIV incidence peaked in the late 1990s and prevalence has been level since 2001. Data set out in this report further suggest that prevention efforts are leading to fewer new infections, especially in young people, and that greater access to treatment is contributing to fewer HIV-associated deaths.
These positive trends mask some alarming changes in the epidemic. My main message today is straightforward: do not forget Africa, and do not forget women.
Today, HIV/AIDS is overwhelmingly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where it thrives on and traps people in poverty. This region accounts for over two thirds of people living with HIV and over three quarters of HIV-associated deaths.
In all regions, the proportion of women living with HIV is growing. In sub-Saharan Africa, it now approaches 61%, the highest in the world. The infection of women amplifies the tragedy. These are wives, mothers, caregivers, and often the backbone of family and community cohesion.
The 17th-century French author François de La Rochefoucauld once observed that "We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others." But it is a perilous strength.
For a quarter-century we have endured the misfortunes of AIDS sufferers—thanks to our sexual neuroses, our contempt for homosexuals, and our racism toward the Africans whose 500 years of unpaid toil and sorrow established us in our present easy circumstances. We owe our own good health to dumb luck, not to superior genes or morals.
Just visit allAfrica.com Health and Medicine to see what a real pandemic does to the world. Measured against the ongoing catastrophe of AIDS, we Flublogians are microscopic.
I hope we continue to be microscopic. An H5N1 pandemic would likely kill countless AIDS victims who would otherwise get on with a few more years of productive and meaningful life.
If our attention to a hypothetical pandemic has any value at all to the millions of AIDS sufferers around the world, it's that we may buy them some time—if we can help smother yet another viral attack on them.
Let us find the strength not merely to endure the misfortunes of AIDS victims, but to embrace them and save them.
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