Heads in the sand over AIDS
How many more lives, how many billions of dollars, will be sacrificed to western sexual ideology?
Every year since 1988 the joyful tidings of Christmas have been preceded by the increasingly upbeat message of World AIDS Day, December 1. This year’s theme of “Getting to zero” was launched last month by Hillary Clinton announcing that an “AIDS-free generation” was within grasp if the United States and countries around the world would team up on scientific advancements. President Obama threw an extra $50 million in that direction and he was joined by former presidents George W Bush and Bill Clinton in promising greater commitment to eradicating the disease. The catch-line, “beginning of the end”, was scripted in the White House. Bono, Elton John and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy leant their faces to the cause.
Unfortunately, the promotion seems to have fallen flat. Pleading financial crisis, the governments that are the mainstay of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (US$21.7 billion pledged last year) have decided to cancel the next funding round and no new applications will be accepted until 2014. This certainly is tragic, since the Global Fund keeps alive nearly half (3.2 million) of the 6.6 million people living on life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, and efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission are said to have some success. Progress has also been made against the other big epidemics. However, there are still 7.6 million people who need ARV treatment, and many of those are now unlikely to get it.
But even without the defection of the cash-strapped rich countries there was always going to be bad news to report. AIDS might be on the decline, thanks to treatment, but HIV infections are on the rise again after falling for several years. About 2.7 million people were infected last year, which is double the number brought into treatment, according to The Independent, and people are now becoming infected faster than they can be tested and treated. In Malawi, a small African country with a population of under 15 million, 70,000 new infections are expected next year.
The truth is that there can never be enough billions to “end” an epidemic driven by the sexual ideology of the same parties — or their partners — that are supposed to be curing it. This was rather sharply illustrated a couple of months ago with the publication of evidence linking the widespread use of progestin injections as birth control with HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa. But even without such a direct channel, the “sex positive” approach of the family planning networks in developing countries guarantees that the behaviour basically responsible for disease — having multiple sex partners — does not change.
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