![]() POSTED JULY 26, 2002 |
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1.
AIDS running amok
2. Divining an undivine future
This African girl was orphaned by AIDS and infected by HIV. USAID.
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Two
decades into the AIDS epidemic We'd hoped for something better. A vaccine. A great treatment. A downslope in the rate of new infections. Something.
No such luck. The 2002 AIDS conference in Barcelona confirmed, if we had any doubt, that the epidemic is still spreading, leaving existing hotbeds in Africa and North America to become a truly global problem. "AIDS epidemic still in early phase and not leveling off in worst-affected countries," the world's AIDS-fighters summarized. We summarize:
The future is grim. AIDS drugs are unaffordable to most potential patients in developing countries. Fewer than 4 percent of those patients, mainly in Brazil, are getting them. So most people will die within 10 years of infection. That means more orphans and funerals, but fewer workers, teachers and doctors.
Two years ago, a report from the U.S. Census Bureau (see "The AIDS Pandemic..." in the bibliography), reported that life expectancy would plunge to around 30 years in six African countries, including Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland. That amounts to erasing a century of public-health progress. Africa: Only the first? We Why Filers are no way wise enough to answer these questions, but we will observe that past epidemics have changed history:
AIDS, to date, has not caused anywhere near the destruction of smallpox or black death. And as a slow-acting, blood-borne illness that's invisible almost to the end, it obeys different epidemiological rules than most previous killers. Still, the concern about the future course of the AIDS epidemic arises quite starkly from today's statistics -- and tomorrow's projections. Where is the AIDS epidemic going?
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There are 1 2
3 pages in this feature. Terry Devitt, editor; Pamela Jackson, project assistant; S.V. Medaris, designer/illustrator; David Tenenbaum, feature writer; Amy Toburen, content development executive ©2002, University of Wisconsin, Board of Regents. |