*Ø* AIDS stalking Africa

What would we do if 40% of the adult population of Australia, Britain or the USA had HIV/AIDS?

We can easily be distracted about the biggest issues when we read things like that George W Bush is sticking to his guns about there being an Iraq-Al Qeda connection, even when the FBI and CIA say there was not. It's a big issue, but not the biggest.

Here in the West it is so easy to forget one of the greatest problems facing the world, and that is the tragic toll that HIV/AIDS is wreaking on so many countries of Africa. This report from the Washington Post and this from CNN present issues and statistics that we need to know.

Of the 36.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS, an overwhelming 95 per cent live in developing countries. And it is in these countries that the anti-retrovirus medicines that have made AIDS a less fearful problem in the West, are relatively unavailable, as are massive prevention programs that are urgently needed. In Lesotho, 30 per cent of adults are infected; Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia have figures of around 40 per cent (source).

By 2020 the epidemic will have claimed the lives of one-fifth or more of all those working in agriculture in many southern African countries.

The UN's AIDS envoy to Africa, Stephen Lewis, says that if the West only had the will to act and stretch out the hand of friendship, the pandemic could be turned round in Africa in just five years. But this is scarcely happening, and Africa is faced with the promise of millions of orphaned children. How many of these will grow into armed militants? Lewis says that everywhere he goes in Africa, he sees death, suffering, funerals.

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