AEGiS-SFE: EDITORIAL: AIDS, domestic and foreign; While the HIV crisis is abating somewhat in the United States, the disease continues to kill thousands around the world each day

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

EDITORIAL: AIDS, domestic and foreign; While the HIV crisis is abating somewhat in the United States, the disease continues to kill thousands around the world each day

San Francisco Examiner - November 29, 1999

IT'S COMFORTING - and absolutely wrong - to believe that the AIDS epidemic has passed its peak and is diminishing as a threat. Every day, more than 5,500 people die of complications of the HIV virus.

This year, the toll around the world will reach 2.6 million AIDS deaths. That's the highest annual total in the two-decade-old epidemic.

Americans may have been lulled into complacency by national statistics that show progress in the war on AIDS. Between 1997 and 1998, the number of deaths from AIDS in the United States dropped 21 percent.

Still, HIV-related diseases are the leading cause of death among African Americans between the ages of 25 and 44, and the second leading cause of death for Latino men of the same age group.

The optimistic trend of the overall U.S. statistics is almost certainly due to two factors: Education and tremendous advances in - and availability of - drugs, often used in expensive combinations.

The same is not true in most underdeveloped countries, especially in Africa, where AIDS education and prevention are rare, and where drug therapy - if available at all - is beyond most patients' economic reach.

In South Africa, not the most hidebound of African nations, 22 percent of the sexually active population harbors the HIV virus.

Ninety percent of the world's 34-million HIV carriers live in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. The HIV infection rate in the countries comprising the old Soviet Union has doubled in the last two years.

So while the situation in the United States on the whole seems to be improving, the global crisis is actually worsening. And the answer to this discrepancy isn't, "Oh, lucky us."

In this interdependent, well-traveled world, no country exists as an island. There are domestic implications of a virulent epidemic raging far from U.S. shores. One is the ability of the virus to mutate and defeat known treatments. New bugs won't stay put in Africa or Thailand. Globalization means that diseases are able to travel as fast as people, capital or ideas.

One wise response is to climb out of our complacency and pay attention. Additionally, we should be willing to pay in hard cash. One expert believes the AIDS infection rate could be cut in half if industrialized nations were willing to spend $2.5 billion.

The other piece of the puzzle is making sure all AIDS patients who need drug treatment get it, and get it at a reasonable price. This is something the big pharmaceutical companies, the U.S. government and most foreign governments have been slow to accept. Maybe 5,500 deaths a day will jog their consciences.
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