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Salem Award—This Year's Honoree Fights to Bring Attention to AIDS Epidemic in Africa
- The Salem News (February 14, 2006)
- By Brian Watson, Viewpoint
Are the people of Africa expendable? Do the white citizens of the developed—aka Western—nations of the world discount—either consciously or unconsciously—the value of the largely black, Semitic, and nonwhite populations of what from colonial times has been called (for its mystery) "the Dark Continent"?
It's hard to avoid those questions when we look at the horrid past and present of Africa and the languid reactions of the First World to events there.
Think of the three-month genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when the entire world watched passively as 800,000 Tutsis were massacred by the Hutu government and its minions. Widely covered in real time by the Western media, thousands of men, women and children were methodically slaughtered every day.
Think of the world's tepid response to the atrocities occurring right now in Sudan. For the past two years, in the Darfur region of the country, Muslim government forces and militias have been murdering or displacing black and non-Muslim tribes. In a continuation of a long civil war that has killed 2 million people already, millions more continue to be at risk of starvation or execution.
Another tragedy unfolding across both Rwanda and Sudan and all 52 countries in Africa, is the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. First identified in the United States in 1981, but originating in Africa around 1960, the disease has killed 16 million Africans since then. Today, 28 million there carry the virus.
Americans are familiar with AIDS. Approximately 1.2 million have HIV in the U.S. But here, although the disease is still incurable, we have access to effective prevention, treatment, and care programs. Citizens are knowledgeable about AIDS transmission, prophylactic measures, and the drum regimens available to AIDS patients.
AIDS in America affects mostly men and the dominant mode of transmission is through male-to-male sex. However, in Africa, more women than men have HIV and the virus is spread mostly through heterosexual sex. More than in America, women play a subservient role to men sexually and are victimized by male behavior. The social mores of Africa still find men having several wives, frequenting prostitutes, and generally engaging in promiscuous behavior. Additionally, civic conflict, refugee movements and severe poverty all contribute to an environment where HIV can flourish.
Recently I spoke with Paula Donovan, who is an adviser to Stephen Lewis, the U.N.'s special envoy to Africa on the issue of HIV/AIDS. Donovan has worked for the United Nations on women's, children's and AIDS issues since 1987. This spring, here in Salem, she will receive the Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice for her long work on behalf of the beleaguered people of Africa.
Donovan described the hunger, destitution and physical degradations common in Africa. She explained additional factors—ignorance of safe-sex measures, lack of condoms, lack of free schooling and inadequate health care—that perpetuate the AIDS pandemic.
Donovan also blamed the regressive policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund which have—through their insistence on tying African aid to inappropriate economic "restructuring"—dismantled social programs, laid off teachers and health workers, and generally undermined the public sector.
The consequences have been devastating. The populations of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda, Kenya, Zaire, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria, and Ethiopia, contain serious levels of HIV. Another 35 million residents of those countries could contract the virus within four or five years if the AIDS crisis is not more fully addressed.
Of the 28 million HIV carriers in Africa, only 1 in 10 has been tested and knows he or she is infected.
Already, an entire generation of parents there has died from AIDS, resulting in 12 million orphans. The lives of these children, and those of another 30 million who similarly don't attend school, promise to be grim.
Both Lewis and Donovan cite the need for large increases in assistance. The continent receives $25 billion a year from world governments; it could use $75 billion (the U.S. donates $6 billion annually).
Universal education, improved health care, antiviral drugs, women's rights, trade and debt reform, and jobs for African men—who currently suffer from a lack of a meaningful role in family life—are all needed. In addition, developed nations and global corporations have to stop exploiting the governments, people, resources, and environments of Africa.
Especially as oil increasingly comes from Africa, the power brokers who manage the development have an opportunity to help or hurt conditions there.
It'll be a challenge to rouse the world sufficiently on Africa's account. It may not be racism that explains the priorities of our political leaders, but it may be something equally harsh. We are forced to distribute limited aid among competing interests that have varying degrees of return for us. Yet for a variety of reasons, arresting Africa's AIDS problem does not yet capture the imagination of our decision makers.
Reprinted with permission from The Salem News.