Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, June 26, 2001
The truth is, hardly any nation wants to admit that its citizens have AIDS. Ask the several dozen government leaders who are attending the first U.N. General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in New York.
Japan and China, for example, have long denied the looming health crisis that threatens their populations. Some Muslim countries, for their part, view homosexuality as a sin punishable by death. They are offended by the proposed U.N. pledge of commitment, which promises to help "men who have sex with men, sex workers and injecting drug users and their sexual partners."
Still other governments object to the pledge's commitment to help prostitutes, prisoners or political refugees. They refuse to admit that their economies thrive on sex tourism, that sex occurs among prisoners or that their refugee camps are plagued by rape.
In addition, many countries are unwilling to challenge the subordinate status of their women, which makes it difficult, often impossible, for wives to flee the threat of heterosexual infection.
To his credit, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has launched a massive global effort and established an international health fund to combat AIDS. So far, however, the fund has received only $528 million, far less than the annual $10 billion that Annan seeks to prevent and treat this catastrophic epidemic.
To its shame, the Bush administration has pledged a meager $200 million to the global health fund. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, a member of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. conference, is now seeking to boost this contribution to at least $1 billion.
At the conference, participants will squabble over many issues, including who should control the global health fund and whether treatment or prevention should receive greater resources.
But none of this matters if the world's leaders refuse to confront the shame and stigma attached to HIV/AIDS. In some parts of Africa, families expel infected relatives. Closer to home, public health officials daily fight with communities who are unwilling to acknowledge the extent of their AIDS epidemic.
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