Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International - April 30, 2000
The newspaper says that the United States feels that the global spread of AIDS is reaching catastrophic dimensions that could topple foreign governments, spark ethnic wars and undo decades of work in building free-market democracies abroad.
The National Security Council, which has never before been involved in combating an infectious disease, is directing a rapid reassessment of the government's efforts.
The Aids control budget requests have been doubled to $254 million and a newly set up White House interagency working group has been asked to "develop a series of expanded initiatives to drive the international efforts" to combat the disease, The Post reported.
Last year the U.S. intelligence reports had looked at the pandemic's broadest consequences for foreign governments and societies, particularly in Africa.
"At least some of the hardest-hit countries, initially in sub-Saharan Africa and later in other regions, will face a demographic catastrophe" over the next 20 years, the newspaper quoted from the study.
A National Intelligence Estimate prepared in January this year had projected that at least a quarter of southern Africa's population is likely to die of AIDS and that the number of people dying of the disease will rise for a decade before there is much prospect of improvement. Based on current trends, that disastrous course could be repeated, perhaps exceeded, in south Asia and the former Soviet Union.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 23 million people are infected in sub-Saharan Africa, with nearly 5,000 people falling prey to the infection everyday. Of 13 million deaths to date, 11 million have been in sub-Saharan Africa. The deadly disease is also spreading its wings rapidly, and largely unchecked, in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
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