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Africa: Subsaharan
Generations of Africans to be affected by AIDS pandemic: UN
2004-11-23
AIDS has hit sub-Saharan Africa so badly that the disease will cast a shadow over generations to come, even in countries that succeed in the battle against it, the United Nations warned on Tuesday. Africans account for some 25.4 million of the 39.4 million people around the world who have either the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or AIDS, the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS said in an annual report. "HIV infection is becoming endemic in sub-Saharan Africa," AIDS Epidemic Update, released ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, said. "Current high prevalence levels mean that even those countries that do eventually reverse the epidemic's course will have to contend with serious AIDS epidemics for many subsequent years. The havoc wrought by AIDS will shape the lives of several generations of Africans." Commercial sex, sexual abuse and violence were pinpointed as the big vectors of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Another source is the re-use of disposable medical instruments such as syringes and needles, but the AIDS organizations don't like to talk about that.
The good news is that east Africa has seen modest declines in HIV prevalence among pregnant women, and levels have stayed steady in central and west Africa. This has helped keep the continent's HIV prevalence to 7.4 percent of the adult population, compared to 7.5 percent in 2003. On the downside, HIV prevalence among expectant mothers has risen sharply in southern Africa from five percent in 1990 to more than 25 percent this year. Southern Africa is "the worst affected sub-region in the world,"  the report declared bluntly. Around 11.4 million people in the nine countries that make up this sub-region live with HIV or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), representing "almost 30 percent of the global number of people living with HIV in an area where only two percent of the world's total population resides," the report said. South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV in the world -- 5.3 million, more than half of them women. Four other countries in the region—Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland—all have "very high HIV prevalence, often exceeding 30 percent among pregnant women".
Posted by:Steve White

#14  Geeze, the UN has a "fuckin' DUH" moment.
Posted by: mojo   2004-11-23 11:32:26 PM  

#13  Africa can thank Rachel Carson for malaria. Her book, Silent Spring, which led to the banning of DDT and the resurgence of insect borne diseases in the third world is responsible for more deaths than almost any in history.
Posted by: RWV   2004-11-23 3:58:04 PM  

#12  All this means to the UN is that they'll have to remember to bring their own hookers with them if they ever head over there.
Posted by: tu3031   2004-11-23 12:38:06 PM  

#11  South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV in the world -- 5.3 million, more than half of them women

Sucks to be South African then.
Posted by: badanov   2004-11-23 11:21:39 AM  

#10  I remember seeing hard data indicating that the African state that has pushed the sexual restraint approach most aggressively is - surprise! - also the most effective at reducing the spread of AIDS. Think it was Uganda.
Posted by: lex   2004-11-23 11:05:42 AM  

#9  Until one changes the internal African culture wrt to the adult males, there will be no end to this. Imho it will only get worse. As TW said -their having sex with virgins as a surefire cure for AIDS or the fact that many do not believe in condom use only precipitates this. We can treat the cases that are present with medicines available but this does nothing to stop the spread of new cases due to the willfull ignorance of the African men. I think it's a money pit.
Posted by: Jarhead   2004-11-23 8:33:35 AM  

#8  South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV in the world -- 5.3 million, more than half of them women

Ah yes, so acc to the MSM's Iraq coverage logic, we were wrong to call for an end to apartheid in SA.

Funny that all the left's hand-wringing about post-Saddam chaos and bloodshed isn't applied to the nightmare that is post-apartheid South Africa. And it's still a nightmare ten years later.
--Twenty percent of the population has AIDS.
--Fifty percent are unemployed.
--One third of South AFrica's women have been raped.
And the MSM are absolutely silent on this. Screw these bastards. Source and report our own stories.
Posted by: lex   2004-11-23 8:15:44 AM  

#7  Excuse me, but "this is exactly what CFR/Sierra Club planned for Sub-Saharan Africa". What on earth have you been smoking? Of all the looney conspiracy theories I've heard over the years, this one just moved ahead of the one claiming martians are responsible for global warming.
Posted by: Weird Al   2004-11-23 8:09:14 AM  

#6  Not a friend of conspiracy theories... But this is exactly what CFR/Sierra Club planned for Sub-Saharan Africa. Simply depopulate it in 50-100 or so years and make it one big safari. Maybe not safari, just an unbound wilderness, without a trace of human footprint. Of course, the elite NWO Communiati would use it as a personal safari.
Posted by: Conanista   2004-11-23 3:17:01 AM  

#5  Malaria kills at least as many people in Africa as AIDS and far more children. Those deaths could be prevented for a fraction of the money now being spent on AIDS treatments. Unfortunately Malaria is not fashionable.

More exactly, AIDS is danger for the chattering classes (people in the show business tend to have disoderly sex lives) while Malaria doesn't affect them: a dozen years ago, on French TV, one of the reporters who had been the most active over AIDS commented about a fund-riase for fighting leper: "It is difficult to feel concerned about a plague who no longer strikes our country"
Posted by: JFM   2004-11-23 1:35:00 AM  

#4  The aid organizations don't like to talk about the vaccines contaminated with unknown viruses from the monkey hosts, either. Or the belief held by many African men that having sex with a virgin is a surefire cure for AIDS, hence the mention in the article of the larger number of young women infected compared to young men. Or the insistence of the South African government that HIV and AIDS are first of all unconnected, that Western AIDS medications are poisonous and ineffective and donations of such must therefore be rejected, and that the native pharmacopia contains the cure.
Posted by: trailing wife   2004-11-23 12:36:24 AM  

#3  Malaria kills at least as many people in Africa as AIDS and far more children. Those deaths could be prevented for a fraction of the money now being spent on AIDS treatments. Unfortunately Malaria is not fashionable.
Posted by: phil_b   2004-11-23 12:35:16 AM  

#2  Does this mean they'll get around to those Islamic regions that reject polio treatment, etc?
Posted by: .com   2004-11-23 12:32:53 AM  

#1  I wonder how many 5-star lunch'es and exotic dinners it took the U.N. to come to this conclusion......
Posted by: CrazyFool   2004-11-23 12:07:59 AM  

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