Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Miami Herald - July 14, 2002
AIDS is the peril that has killed a million human beings since it became an epidemic 20 years ago and will take the lives of the 40 million people now infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Until its spread is staunched and a cure found, AIDS will rank as the world's worst threat with the deepest, most long-lasting repercussions. The United States must get involved with this global war with as much determination and resources as it has put into the war on terrorism.
The epidemic has wreaked havoc on individual lives and on families for nearly a generation. Now, however, it has become pandemic. It threatens communities and even the stability of nations, especially those in the former Soviet Bloc and Third World countries ill-equipped to deal with this insidious disease.
This grim reality was one of many raised during the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona last week. Another is that the disease's infection rate has not yet crested. Experts predict that, unless more is done to prevent HIV infections, 70 million people will die of AIDS by 2020 compared to 20 million deaths in the epidemic's first 20 years.
But there also is good news. For example, a new study shows that a concentrated prevention effort over three years could prevent 29 million HIV infections by 2010. Such hopeful findings prompted many in Barcelona to call upon the United States, with the world's largest economy, to contribute more to the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The Bush administration recently committed $500 million to a United Nations fund for the prevention of newborn HIV infections over the next five years -- but only after it squelched a move in Congress to spend that much each year. This simply isn't enough. In spending bills coming up this month, Congress should increase significantly the U.S. contribution -- to at least $2.5 billion a year.
That figure represents 25 percent of the global fund's total amount and is commensurate with the 22 percent of the world's gross domestic product that the United States produces. The figure is puny compared to what the United States is committing to the war on terrorism. But it would put our country where it belongs in this other, grimmer war: at the front.
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