Zambia: 40,000 to be Born HIV Positive

[chlamor]

40,000 to Be Born HIV Positive

The Times of Zambia (Ndola)

March 23, 2005

HEALTH Minister Brian Chituwo says as many as 40,000 children will be born infected with HIV every year if intervention measures are not put in place.

The minister also revealed that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Danish Fund for International Development (DFID) had procured 47 million male condoms to support the response to mitigate HIV and AIDS.


Dr Chituwo said that mother-to-child transmission rate stood at 40 per cent and that of the 500,000 babies born every year, one out of every five pregnant women was infected with HIV.

"The transmission rate of 40 per cent from mother to child means that we can expect 40,000 HIV infected children to be born every year if we do not put any interventions in place," he said.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200503230803.html

[autorank]

1. Where's Jebbie, where's George, where's the bug guy!

HYPOCRITES

[MountainLaurel]

8. It's OK, Barbara is on her way

Maybe.

Is presidential daughter Barbara Bush following through on her previously announced intentions to work with HIV-afflicted children overseas? We hear that she held a going-away party in Washington last week to announce her move to Africa, but details were sparse -- and the White House yesterday declined to comment, citing its policy of not discussing the private lives of Barbara or her twin, Jenna.

During her father's campaign, Barbara expressed interest in working for a pediatric AIDS program at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, helping HIV-positive children at clinics in Africa and elsewhere. Mark Kline, the doctor who directs Baylor's AIDS initiative, told us yesterday: "We'd love to have her join us, but we haven't heard a thing. . . . We made an offer to Barbara about a year ago, but at this point she hasn't confirmed that she is going to work for us."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61876-2005Mar23.html

[autorank]

14. Oh, I'm sure that Baylor guy just didn't check his voice mail.

They'd never back out of this commitment, just like * didn't back out of his big promise for African AIDS funding. Remember shen Rather said "I trust and believe my President." Well me too, NOT.

[Joe the Revelator]

2. Man, whats going on in Africa is pretty scary.

I know I'm stating the obvious but whatever.

Is there any truth to the factoid i heard saying that if something doesn't change, AIDS will wipe out the population of Africa in 40 years?

[vpigrad]

3. There is no excuse for the 40%!

In the US, I think less than 2% of the kids born by mothers with AIDS contract the disease. Instead, evil men like Bush withhold treatment and money from the women in Africa so their babies will contract AIDS. By the time the AIDS problem is (hopefully) solved, Bush will have killed more children than Hitler.

[applegrove]

4. A great thing big Pharma turned the screws on India so they could

no longer make AIDS drugs on the cheap and send those to Africa. I mean.. externalities are only unimportant if you cannot make a profit on them.

Like water. Some day water will be a commodity (as it is already in South America in places). Then the environment will no longer be considered an externalities. When you make nature rare..it becomes a scarcity and a market item. The USA has just tried to make all G8 stop a bill that would have made it a crime to buy wood from illegal (unmanaged sources). But everyone knows the more forest that are destroyed.. the less the rainstorms.. the less rain becomes a 'free ride'.

How many will die because the price of Aids drugs in Africa will go up and governments and agencies cannot afford the drugs? And is this the intended policy? It seems to me the neocons want to take the accolades for thinking 5 steps ahead. I wonder how many will die because big Pharma decided on legislation to 'not ignore externalities'.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. kick

[BlueIris]

6. This totally breaks my heart. n/t

[seemslikeadream]

7. ORPHANED BY AIDS

DR. STELLA GOINGS, UNICEF Zambia: It's very hard to find a family in Zambia that hasn't been personally touched. It's very hard to find a child that hasn't seen or witnessed a death related to HIV/AIDS. The extended family in the community structure, they've really broken under the weight of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and poverty, and when the burden becomes too great, families are unable to cope anymore, and so we're seeing tremendous numbers of orphans and children who are no longer able to be cared for by their extended family.

And in the midst of all that, we are seeing within the communities themselves and within extended families truly heroic efforts to absorb the children, to work with them, to give them the nurturing and caring in the environment, in their own communities that is so necessary for this next generation.

JONATHAN SILVERS: As the toll mounts, Zambia's elder generation is struggling to preserve its traditions. In the village of Kamponde, Ndiliaha Mwila and her husband, Steven, took in two grandchildren in 1999 after losing their son and daughter- in-law to AIDS. With work and food scarce, the Mwila family subsists on one meal a day, a meal for which granddaughter Queen is grateful.

QUEEN MWILA (Translated): My brother and I were brought here after staying with relatives in different towns. My grandfather took us in because we weren't going to school. None of my other relatives thought to send me to school. They made us work all the time and didn't feed us.

more
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june02/aids_zambia_5-9.html

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ScreamingMeemie]

10. Welcome to DU floridian_guy!

:hi: Is there a reason why you're kicking posts without putting any input in? ;)

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ScreamingMeemie]

12. True, and 40,000 times one woman who left 15 years ago for all intents

and purposes. :hi:

[libpunkmom]

13. The WTO just made sure that none

of these people can afford the meds that they need.. Fuck the WTO, Fuck the New World Order!!!