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Printer-Friendly ModeAfrica needs immediate help combating AIDS
March 20, 2006 —
AIDS has become an overwhelming problem throughout Africa. The African governments are just now starting to realize and prevent the impact of the disease, and it is crucial that the United States gets much more involved with encouraging medical assistance to Africa during a period of political stabilization of the continent.
There is currently not enough U.S. support going towards stopping the African AIDS crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world most affected by HIV and AIDS. This area is home to 25 million individuals living with HIV, and accounts for 60 percent of the world's total HIV/AIDS population. With more assistance from the U.S., the African nations would be able to help prevent the premature deaths of these individuals.
If the African AIDS pandemic is not soon stabilized, global geography will be even more drastically impacted than it already has been. AIDS has orphaned more than 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa, a number that is expected to rise to 20 million by 2010.
Many of these children have long surpassed the American definition of malnourishment, and have life expectancies of approximately 40 years of age. Quite a few of these children are infected with HIV, and will likely pass the virus on to their own children unless they die even earlier than expected.
Without more U.S. support, the distribution of human life in Africa could easily suffer beyond repair. It has been estimated that future African countries could be made up of citizens no older than middle-aged.
These future citizens would be angry from having lost their families and loved ones to AIDS. They would be bitter and unwilling to cooperate with anyone who might provide them with financial resources and healthcare. Fairly well established African governments would fall disastrously, and the continent would become a breeding ground for international terror.
This cannot happen.
The U.S. needs to lead the rest of the Western World in a mission to teach the African people how to help themselves. The governments of sub-Saharan Africa are in desperate need of being built up so that they can successfully function alone in the future. If the U.S. decided today to assist more in the stabilization of African politics, then the governments could soon administer healthcare to their citizens. Adequate healthcare would save millions of people living with HIV from the detrimental effects of full-blown AIDS. With proper healthcare, the life expectancy would rise, and the number of children annually orphaned by AIDS would diminish.
Sub-Saharan Africa has needed medical assistance for decades. The U.S. needs to stop blatantly discriminating against the African nations and begin to help the millions upon millions of individuals now suffering from a disease beyond their control. A crisis of this magnitude would never have been allowed to occur in the West, and it is against all of morality to have been allowed to escalate in Africa. The U.S. media currently disregards the lack of assistance Africa receives, and the American public is generally indifferent toward the continent.
However, largely thanks to Great Britain, last summer's G8 summit pledged universal access to anti-HIV drugs in Africa by 2010. This promise was long overdue, and the U.S. - a country with a 2005 GDP per capita ranking 16 places wealthier than Great Britain - should have been the driving force behind a similar pledge years before.
Nevertheless, the U.S. did take part in this charitable promise, and it must keep this promise and treat it as just the beginning in terms of lifesaving aid to Africa. After all, if the most powerful country in the world instead continues to disregard the dire needs of an entire continent, the future of Africa will undoubtedly hit much closer to home than it should have already.