With all the attention being paid to the war in Afghanistan, I thought I would bring you a bit of news from another stricken part of the world. I’m sure that many of you have heard bits and pieces about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. You may have even heard that in South Africa, specifically, one out of three adults is stricken with the virus that causes AIDS. That number in itself is absolutely terrifying.
The cause can be attributed to many things: the male populace’s nearly wholesale rejection of the use of condoms, the lack of widespread medical care and health education, the lack of true women’s rights, and now finally political infighting about AIDS drugs.
This article asserts that the South African government’s health care arm is limiting the public’s access to a drug called nevirapine. This drug is often used with newborns who are born of AIDS-infected mothers. A half-spoonful of the medicine can be given to the child and a pill given to the mother within 72 hours of birth for about $1. The proponents of the drug say that the 70,000 children born with AIDS in South Africa every year could be reduced to 10-20,000.
The opponents of the drug are concerned that there needs to be more education about the benefits and risks of the drug, such as the fact that it does not stop babies from getting AIDS from their mother’s breastmilk. They also claim that delivering the drug in a widespread manner is impossible because of operational and infrastructure problems. Surely, they can’t be worried about continued health care costs. Curing these children for $1 certainly has to be more cost effective than having an HIV-infected child using the public health system for 10 years.
It’s amazing that in a country where 23% of pregnant women are infected with HIV, a drug, that could save the lives of 50,000 children a year and is considered safe not only in South Africa but in many other countries, is relegated to the status of being on trial. The sheer cost benefits of saving a child’s life for about $1 demand that the drug be given widespread distribution status. Claims of “operational” problems hold no water to the plight of certain death for a child born with HIV. The country of South Africa could fall to its knees in 10 years if the death rates and infection rates from AIDS increase at their current levels. Imagine a country where a 1/5 of the population dies every year. Eventually, it becomes an empty barren wasteland.
Not to be Jesse Jackson, but one wonders if some of the old guard attitudes toward race aren’t playing a part in all this. All of the clinical “trials” are being held at private clinics. 85% of the population rely on the public clinics for their health care. I am willing to bet that of that 85%, probably 95% of those are black South Africans.
With all the out-pouring of emotion and money after the World Trade Center attack, let this thought snap you back to reality: 20,000 children die every year from AIDS in South Africa alone. That’s 4 times the number of people who died at the WTC attack.