In the United States, this year’s commemoration comes in a moment of transition for American democracy. A new President and new Congress will shape this nation’s response to HIV/AIDS at home and around the world. Many significant challenges face America’s leaders in the coming years.
We must find ways to build on successes in fighting HIV and AIDS in the developing world. American leadership since 2003 has brought life-saving treatment to more than 1.7 million people in sub-Saharan Africa (in contrast to 50,000 in 2002), while supporting more than 33 million counseling and testing sessions and providing prevention services for nearly 13 million pregnant women. Still, more than 6,000 people continue to die each day as a result of the pandemic, and infection rates in some of the hardest-hit places continue to grow. Earlier this year, Congress and the President pledged significantly increased funding, and renewed strategies, for the global fight against AIDS. It will be up to the new Congress and Administration to keep the promises that have been made by their predecessors.
WORLD AIDS DAY
This is a sobering article on the effects of AIDS/HIV, its impact on health care issues other than itself, and the need to address priorities:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/…q_k6wD94PCE880
Particularly shocking was the death rate due to dehydration/diarrhea at 5 times that of HIV/AIDS.
Science can tell us the facts about these differing diseases but it cannot tell us how to address them and on what basis to distribute medical care and medical science advances.
How do you think it should be done?
The National Cathedral started its truly monumental slide into irrelevance when about 15 years ago it mandated that the Prayers of the People recall those with HIV/AIDS. Not any of the largest killer diseases were ever prayed about, mind you. None of the truely widespread diseases affecting DC’s majority black community were ever mentioned. Just the one with a cosmopolitan DC flavor with its own special minority rights.
Our Church has been taken over by self-important cosmopolitan types. Their tinker toys consist of the people and wealth of the Church that they are dessimating.
One the one hand, I agree that it’s odd to single out one disease for particular prayer but as a disease HIV/AIDS has a far different impact in the developing world than it does here. I remember a Ugandan bishop preaching at Grace Cathedral in 1993 about the effects of AIDS in his diocese (of 2 million): Nearly 30% of the population was infected. It was wiping out a generation – a generation that would normally outlive their parents and care for them. The bishop himself asked us to think what it is like when your children are your life insurance and health insurance and you are burying them.
Even in this country, HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects African Americans, especially African American women. I’m not sure most people with HIV/AIDS would be seen as ‘self important cosmopolitan types’ or ‘special minorities.’
Perhaps its helpful to think about this as the global epidemic that it is, wiping out a generation (by now, possible 2 generation) in Africa rather than what it isn’t in this country. Incidentally, over 1,000,000 Americans live with HIV/AIDS. Just because more people have other diseases doesn’t make that number insignificant.
Dirk
Dirk, considering your feelings regarding AIDS and its effect on a community’s children, you should take note of dwstroudmd’s comment, [i]”Particularly shocking was the death rate due to dehydration/diarrhea at 5 times that of HIV/AIDS”[/i] and remember that dehydration/diarrhea is a killer of infants, toddlers and young children; it is not a condition that, in most cases, claims the lives of adults. Since dehydration/diarrhea claims the lives of far more children than AIDS does but are nonetheless conditions easily treated and cured (as opposed to AIDS, which is not), why shouldn’t we be putting our resources there instead?
I don’t think it’s an either/or question. The MDGs (a dreaded phrase, I know, but the framework through which nearly 200 countries in the world have committed to addressing the causes of poverty) both emphasize combatting HIV/AIDS and improved child health care.
The World Bank reports that 30,000 children die each day from preventable causes, nearly half of them in sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS world wide and AIDS is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa (again, World Bank statistics).
http://devdata.worldbank.org/atlas-mdg/
If we want to start rationing health care resources, what critiera do we use? The age of people affected, the gender? The income level? Personal responsibility in its causes? Cost of services? Using some of those criteria, we could treating lung cancer caused by cigarette smoking, liver disease caused by drinking alcohol, hepatitis caused by drug use, heart disease caused by excessive weight and bad diet, and so forth.
Personally, I think tremendous gains can be made on the infant mortality and HIV/AIDS front in African nations through the growing partnership between wealthy American dioceses and African provinces. The bishops in Africa place addresing AIDS as a high priority, so it would make sense that their American partners in mission would join them in that effort.
In terms of caring for the sick, what would Jesus do? To me, that’s the only question that determines the church’s advocacy on health care.
Dirk