Margaret Krome says: I remember the summer I went into the Peace Corps in Cameroon in 1983. My parents were nervous about my going, of course, and envisioned many dangers from thieves, diseases, political unrest and other problems. The night before I left the country, my nurse friend Janet mentioned that, by the way, I ought to keep an eye on a new disease emerging in Africa, AIDS
Margaret Krome: AIDS epidemic getting worse without education, treatment
By Margaret Krome
December 9, 2004
Subscribe to The Capital Times
I didn't really want to write about something as desolate as AIDS on a day as dreary as today. But I started reading about the AIDS epidemic, and I couldn't stop.
A disease that has killed more than 20 million people in 20 years, infects 40 million more today worldwide and whose infection rate is growing, not diminishing, in many countries, is so catastrophic it's hard to fully grasp, sitting in my warm, safe home.
I remember the summer I went into the Peace Corps in Cameroon in 1983. My parents were nervous about my going, of course, and envisioned many dangers from thieves, diseases, political unrest and other problems. The night before I left the country, my nurse friend Janet mentioned that, by the way, I ought to keep an eye on a new disease emerging in Africa, AIDS.
Having been given a thorough training in bodily afflictions I might encounter in sub-Saharan Africa, I was familiar with potential tropical diseases that could blind, disable and kill. So I paid attention.
For a few months I didn't hear of anyone with AIDS. Then I learned of a Peace Corps volunteer who had died of pneumonia, and then about a friend of a friend from the Central African Republic who had died of the "wasting disease." The Peace Corps began to issue warnings about the disease.
Still, while I lived in Africa, I didn't see the full impact of the disease. It wasn't until a few years later when I learned of the death of the beefy but promiscuous police chief in my small town that the disease began to take on a personal face. My friend Therese was widowed young. I began hearing of children left without parents. Grandparents who were expecting to be cared for in their old age suddenly had to take care of their orphaned grandchildren. A country already impoverished from decades of international resource plunder, corruption and ineffectual development policies faced social and health costs they couldn't handle.
Cameroon isn't alone. The world's developing countries all face terrible losses from this disease. But sub-Saharan Africa has borne some of the worst of the epidemic, housing just over 10 percent of the world's population, but more than 60 percent of the world's HIV sufferers. This year, somewhere between 2.7 million and 3.8 million people contracted HIV, while an estimated 2.3 million died of AIDS. Experts say that the worst will hit several years down the road.
Suddenly jittery after reading such statistics this morning, I called my friend Christophe in Cameroon to make sure that he and his wife and two adopted children are OK. It was evening there, and I was delighted to greet his two boys on the phone. Christophe and I discussed Cameroon's epidemic, in which the United Nations estimates that 10 percent of pregnant women are infected.
He agreed with AIDS experts that education is the key to curbing the epidemic, as is eliminating the poverty that breeds the disease. We didn't discuss the key role of protecting women, who are common vectors for the disease through sexual transmission, sometimes without their choice. We also didn't discuss the costs of AIDS drugs, but the United Nations says that in the developing world, where 95 percent of people with HIV live, only 7 percent of those who need life-saving treatment can get it.
Christophe did say that he thinks President Bush is a likable guy. I mentioned the president's track record of self-serving AIDS policies, such as targeting AIDS funding for countries that support U.S. foreign policy, rather than channeling it through the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS.
Christophe, always optimistic, said that perhaps in his second term Bush will address the issue more sincerely, recognizing the devastation AIDS is causing in already unstable countries like his. I got off the phone, grateful for Christophe's good spirit, but wondering whether, as this global scourge worsens, our nation will justify his faith.
Margaret Krome of Madison writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times. E-mail: mkrome@inxpress.net.
Published: 8:07 AM 12/9/04
