AIDS: Its Grip Tightens on our Future

AIDS is one of the biggest killers in the world, with half of its victims acquiring the virus before they turn 25 and typically dying before their 35th birthday. According to the UN, AIDS now kills more than any other infectious disease – and is the fourth overall cause of death. Ninety-five percent of people with HIV live in the developing world, a proportion that is likely to grow as infection rates continue to rise in countries where poverty, poor health systems and limited educational resources fuel the spread of the virus. Currently, this disease is overwhelming the African continent where the number of AIDS related deaths have surpassed those of malaria. In fact, the numbers are astounding with one in five of all deaths in Africa last year being attributed to AIDS. Sub-Saharan Africa, with 10 percent of the world’s population accounts for close to 70 percent of the total global AIDS cases. But the African continent is not the only one continent that is inflicted with a widespread of this disease; AIDS is also spreading rapidly across the continent of Asia.

Asia is now set to see the biggest AIDS explosion with numbers of HIV cases expected to double by the year 2000; thereby, making it the next hot spot. Cambodia currently has the most infected AIDS patients in Asia, with an estimated 150,000 individuals infected the virus. Of this figure, around 90 percent of these individuals are thought to have caught the virus through heterosexual intercourse. However, in different parts of the continent, as in different parts of the world, there are variations in the pattern of HIV spread. For example, in China and Vietnam, intravenous drug use is the primary means upon which the virus is contracted. The AIDS virus, hence, continues to plague the world and continues to kill people on a global scale.

The Asian scenario, however, is almost the opposite of what is happening in North America and Europe, where the rate of infection has been brought under some control thanks to massive prevention campaigns and more availability of anti-retroviral drugs. With the general consensus that a cure cannot be found for AIDS, concern for eliminating the virus through educational and informative means is essential and necessary. More importantly, however, is the fact that the virus is now literally impacting our future generations — that is – with an estimated 570,000 children currently living with the virus, AIDS has established itself as an ongoing contender for the new millennium. Furthermore, by the year 2000 AIDS will have made its presence felt in the homes and lives of at least 13 million children who will have become orphans, losing one or both parents to this disease.

These figures are alarming and have resulted with the theme for this year’s World AIDS day — on December 1, 1999 — being the role of children and young adults as a force for change on the ongoing fight against AIDS. This theme is appropriate since at stake is the future of our world. But a key problem, or issue of concern, is how will these children be sort? That is, with a majority of these children in the rural developing world, how will they be informed? How will the approximately 95 percent of children orphaned by an AIDS-related deaths in sub-Saharan Africa be touched? In the developed nations the issue of disseminating information is much more simplified thanks to technology, but in the rural slums of Asia, Africa, Latin America or elsewhere how will the education begin?

It is obvious that the vast population of individuals who are in need of the facts are also the ones who are faced with limited resources. They are the ones who have little access to education and, hence, cannot read and write, and in many cases they have little, or no control over the circumstances of their lives. Do we then have a responsibility to promote find innovative ideas to educate, or do we merely sit back and allow the destruction of lives to continue? For many of us, thinking back to the beginning stages when this virus was made known we can recall, hopefully, the confusion that the general public had about this virus. Think then back to that time when the education of AIDS was put into full force, we had public figures making announcements, holding concerts and raising money. We had governmental announcements on televisions, in our schools, and anywhere else humanly possible. Now imagine a
rural village, where access to the television is a luxury; where young girls, who are greatly impacted by this virus, are forced to quit school because of household responsibilities; where the governments corrupt ways make much need resources diverted to other matters. In this such society, is the chance to listen, learn and live possible?