Africa: Aids Epidemic Continues to Outstrip Response

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

http://allafrica.com/stories/200407070003.html

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Johannesburg

New global estimates of the AIDS epidemic are slightly lower than previously thought, but HIV continues to spread and outpace the response, said the UNAIDS '2004 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic' launched on Tuesday.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicentre of the epidemic. It has 10 percent of the world's population but is home to 70 percent of all infected people - an estimated 25 million. Adult HIV prevalence appears to have stabilised, but this is due to the fact that new infections - more than two million every year - have been offset by a rise in AIDS-related deaths.
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Southern Africa remains the world's worst affected region. Botswana and Swaziland have the world's highest prevalence rates among people aged 15 to 49 at 37.3 percent and 38.85 precent respectively, followed by Lesotho with 28.9 percent, Zimbabwe with 24.6 percent, South Africa with 21.5 percent, Namibia with 21.3 percent and Zambia with 16.5 percent.

The reasons for the region's high rates include poverty, social instability leading to family disruption, high levels of sexually transmitted infections, low status of women, sexual violence, high mobility due to migrant labour, and ineffective leadership during critical periods in the epidemic's spread, said the report.
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[sniffa]

1. stop saying 'epidemic' cuz it's not

charLie danieLs said so. it's a smaLL probLem that onLy affects the gays, and besides, it's god's punishment.

charLie "definateLy not a has-been" danieLs.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

2. Whoops - sorry I forgot

Thanks for the reminder!

:)

Whew- almost got a whole mess a rednecks sore at me!

[seemslikeadream]

3. GENOCIDE

*3.5 million souls from Congo since 1998

On the Trail of the Congo's "Cannibal Rebels


Maria, a mother of three, lost her arm defending her children in Nizi, Eastern Congo. She says soldiers ate flesh from the arm after they had amputated it.
From: Eliza Griswold
Subject: Cannibalism as a Crime of War
Friday, March 26, 2004, at 8:20 AM PT

Maria lost her arm defending her children; she says soldiers ate flesh from the arm after they amputated it

In Bunia, the town's population has swelled from 6,000 to 120,000 people. Most have left everything—crops, possessions, their families—to escape the ongoing massacres in the bush. Through a network of local human rights organizations, I arrange to meet with a handful of survivors. One Sunday morning, over a hundred people show up to tell their stories.

One of them, Vivienne Nyamutale, 30, says that she spent 75 days captive with the Lendu fighters in the bush. "I was taken as the fourth wife of the fetish chief, Chief Abele." On five separate occasions before the Lendu fighters attacked a Hema village, Vivienne says, Hema men were brought before the crowd, cooked, and eaten by the fighters. Vivienne is Hema. She survived captivity only by swearing that she was Alur, the most common tribe in this part of Congo. Finally, after one massacre, she ran into the night and escaped. Vivienne is one of a handful of women who tell me about rape camps farther along the Fataki road where we found the two dead men.

Later, I visit a camp for displaced people and meet Chantal Tsesi, 24. We sit in the camp's office to talk. On the floor, a 2-week-old baby cries. The baby's parents have been killed; she was left at the camp by a neighbor who grabbed the infant while fleeing the massacre.

Draping a green batik cloth over her left shoulder, Chantal says that at 5 in the morning on Aug. 27, 2002, she woke to gunfire in the gold-mining town of Mabanga-Gélé. She was alone with her 6-year-old son, Claude, as men armed with machetes entered her house. "Today we are going to cut off your arm so you can't prepare mandro " they said to her. She tells me, "They cut off my arm and took it outside where they had made a fire. They cooked it, while they were drinking our mandro, and ate it with the rest of the beans and rice." Claude had escaped into the bush with relatives. Then, she says flatly, "They told me they were going to find my husband and eat his heart."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2097314/entry/0/fr/ifr /


when will I see
an end to destruction and woe
and how will I see
no division, in my life

there comes a time to make amends
never too late to try again
to save our soul

when will I see an end
to the famine and war
and when will I say
there's no solution no more
there comes a time to make amends
never too late to try again
to save our soul

all that I see
is soul destroying, greed
when will I say
there's no solution to meet
there comes a time to make amends
never too late to try again
to save our soul

clannad

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

5. How utterly depressing

*sigh*

[SophieZ]

4. The numbers in Africa are incomprehensible.

I once heard that the number of people with AIDS in Africa is approaching the ENTIRE population of Canada. I didn't believe it, until I checked it with my own eyes.

Population of Canada --- 31.9 million people
2002-mid estimate Info Please almanac
Area and Population of Countries


I have seen numbers before of 29 million as the number of people with AIDS in Africa. No one really knows, of course. Many countries won't openly deal with it.

Here in the U.S., we reeled after the horrific deaths of <3000 people on September 11th. The death of even one person changes the lives of many.

Imagine, if you will, losing the entire population -- every person -- in Chicago, last year. Then, imagine losing everyone in Houston and Austin, Texas this year. Imagine losing everyone in Philadelphia and Dallas next year. That is how many people die of AIDS each year around the world. An estimated 8000 people a day, total of 2.9 million a year.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked the world for $7 - $10 billion to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. I believe it was in 2001, Bush offered $200 million for the fund in his 2003 budget, with a total of $900 million in international AIDS spending. (Source: New York Times, reprinted in Houston Chronicle, 02/14/02, Annan asks U.S. for more AIDS funding) That is just a #)(*&$ insult. He has offered more since, but often promises big bucks then slides it over from other humanitarian programs, and it's a lot less than the big speech said.

In the buildup to the Iraq war, the US offered Turkey $13 billion if the US could use Turkish land for airfields etc. to attack Iraq's northern front. We are spending $1 - 2 billion a WEEK to fight in Iraq.

The proven killer, AIDS, walks the globe. Killing the equivalent of twenty Sept. 11s each week.