People worry about terrorism. They worry about war in Iraq. What they ought to worry about is AIDS — not perhaps catching it, but what it is doing to the world. It is the biggest scourge of humanity. The number of people infected continues to rise remorselessly, five million more were infected last year, 3.1 million died. The number now living with the disease is 42 million; for the first time more women are infected than men.
Those are the bare, chilling statistics. But they have terrible consequences. In sub-Saharan Africa, where 29.4 million people are infected AIDS is crushing entire economies. It is no accident that counties like Botswana (38.8 percent HIV positive) and Zimbabwe (33.7 percent) also have food crises. The two are linked: the young, the economically productive are being wiped out.
The prospect is equally horrendous in Asia. Economic experts warn that the disease could cut growth rates in India and China by a third. Almost four million Indians now live with AIDS, the second highest national figure after South Africa. In China too, the figures are alarming. The number of infections rose 17 percent in the first six months of this year. But it is Indonesia that poses the greatest threat. Recent upheavals have led to a dramatic rise in drug abuse, something unknown a decade ago, and with it HIV infection. The UN’s AIDS program estimates that the number of Indonesian drug users living with HIV could almost double next year, accounting for more than 80 percent of new HIV infections worldwide.
On this, World AIDS Day, these are predictions to shock. Shocking too is the fact that in the West AIDS has become a disease people can live with for years, thanks to advances in medication while in much of the rest of the world, it is a disease people still die from because of money: the drugs cost too much and cheaper generic ones are not allowed.
But what about the Middle East? There is a general perception here that AIDS is not an issue. That is a dangerous delusion. According to UN statistics there are 550,000 reported HIV cases in the Middle East and North Africa — only marginally less than the figure for Western Europe (570,000). But the Middle East has a smaller population than Western Europe. That translates to one in 510 people in the Middle East being HIV positive, compared to one in 714 in Western Europe. The reality is even worse. European statistics are almost certainly accurate and represent the whole figure. Not so in the Middle East: eight states do not report figures at all; many give only estimates. Those eight have a combined population of 80 million. If the infection rate reported in Yemen (0.05 percent according to the UN) were replicated in those eight, it would take Middle East figures beyond Western Europe’s, producing a regional rate of infection of one in 474. Even that, some believe, would be an underestimation.
AIDS spreads through ignorance and denial; the longer it is ignored, the stronger its grip becomes. Without proper surveillance there can be no effective response. AIDS must not be allowed to be the unspoken disease in the Middle East. That happened in South Africa and look at the result! At least in South Africa there are now grounds for hope; because there are now awareness programs, the infection rate, at least in the cities, dropped significantly this past year.
It is no shame to admit that AIDS exists. What is wrong is pretending that it does not; it only means that the problem gets worse.
