Shame on the West for watching as Africa dies

AIDS and HIV have already infected more than 47 million people worldwide and orphaned 13.2 million children, and if the virus continues to spread at current rates, it will kill more people than the Black Death. It sounds like a super-virus worthy of Robin Cook, but for the people of epidemic-stricken African nations, AIDS is only too real.

In the past quarter-century, AIDS has killed more than 11 million sub-Saharan Africans, and it will most likely kill twice that number within 15 years since 22 million others are infected with HIV. In some countries, such as Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa, infection rates are approaching 20 to 30 percent of the total population.

How would we react if a crisis of this magnitude had befallen North America or Europe? We'd be up in arms, and rightly so, demanding that our governments take drastic action to combat the virus. Since the deaths are African deaths, since we cannot hear the cries of orphans half a world away, and since the "It's their fault—let them deal with it" mentality persists among developed nations, much of the Western world continues to deny the tragic scope of Africa's AIDS epidemic.

Though activists have called for an "AIDS Marshall Plan," a massive outpouring of aid and restructuring of global health priorities, no such initiative is currently on the horizon. At the moment, support from donor countries to fight AIDS worldwide is estimated to be $300 million a year—small change, considering U.S. military spending averages $250 billion annually.

Journalist Mark Schoofs, who spoke at a JE Master's Tea and at the Slifka Center two weeks ago, won a Pulitzer Prize for his eight-part Village Voice series documenting the impact of AIDS on the African populace. "Quite simply," he wrote, "AIDS is on track to dwarf every catastrophe in Africa's recorded history. It is stunting development, threatening the economy, and transforming cultural traditions."

One of the most important revelations in Schoofs' writings is that African cultural mores facilitate the spread of the virus. Misogyny permeates many African societies. Men routinely patronize prostitutes in the big cities, then spread the virus to their wives at home, who in turn pass it on to unborn children. African women often realize that their husbands' actions are likely to expose them to HIV, but feel they cannot take the steps necessary to avoid contracting the virus.

Once married, an African woman is not allowed to refuse sex, and a wife's request that her husband wear a condom is tantamount to an accusation of infidelity. Thoko Ngwenya, a crusader against domestic violence in Zimbabwe, explained, "Once men have paid dowry, they are not forcing their wives to have sex. It's just their right."

Outside intervention aimed at uprooting such traditions is an extreme measure—but fully justified, if it will allow millions of women to remain HIV negative.

Preventative measures like intervention and HIV education are the most cost-effective. In Uganda, for example, the HIV infection rate soared to 14 percent in the early 1990s, but it has dropped to eight percent since then, thanks in large part to government-sponsored prevention programs. AIDS education in Brazil has paid off as well: close to 90 percent of 16- to 25-year-old Brazilian men surveyed reported consistent condom use with casual sex partners. Expensive anti-viral agents, lauded as they are in the West, slow, but do not halt, the virus's progress.

Clearly, the hardest-hit African nations must learn to help themselves, but they will be infinitely better equipped to fight the AIDS plague with support from their wealthy neighbors. Many African nations are unable to allocate sufficient funding to public-health sectors because a disproportionate percentage of government capital must be used to repay foreign debts.

The hitherto half-hearted efforts of developed nations to fund AIDS education in Africa, to distribute affordable anti-viral drugs, and to forgive African debts must be stepped up. The 2000 AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, at which 10,000 physicians, researchers, clinicians and other public health advocates outlined ways to reverse the epidemic, was a step in the right direction, but by no means a cure-all.

An effective budget for AIDS prevention in sub-Saharan Africa would require about $3 billion, a little more than one percent of the Pentagon's yearly peacetime expenditures.

Though isolationists like to recite the old standby "Charity begins at home," perhaps charity should begin where it is most needed. With one in four adults in the most hard-hit areas of Africa doomed to premature death, intervention is no longer a choice, but an absolute necessity.

Elizabeth Svoboda is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles.

Graphic by Sarah England.

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