Aids in Africa

The AIDS epidemic has reached disastrous proportions on the continent of Africa. Over the past two decades, two thirds of the more than 16 million people in the world infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, live in sub-Saharan Africa. It is now home to the largest number of people infected, with 70 percent of the world's HIV infected population. The problem of this ongoing human tragedy is that Africa is also the least equipped region in the world to cope with all the challenges posed by the HIV virus. In order understand the social and economic consequences of the disease, it is important to study the relationship between poverty, the global response, and the effectiveness of AIDS prevention, both government and grass roots.

Half of the world's cases are found in what is referred to as the AIDS belt, a chain of countries in eastern and southern Africa that is home to two percent of the global population. The main vehicle for spreading HIV throughout Africa is heterosexual intercourse. In contrast, this is the opposite compared to the U.S. where the virus is usually transmitted through homosexual intercourse or contaminated syringes shared by drug users. Besides heterosexual intercourse, HIV transmission through transfusion and contaminated medical equipment is common in sub-Saharan Africa. Africans infected with HIV die much sooner after diagnosis than HIV infected people in other parts of the world. In industrialized countries, the survival time after diagnosis of AIDS ranges from 9 to 26 months, but in Africa the survival time for patients is 5 to 9 months (UNAIDS 3). Factors, such as lower access to health care, poorer quality of health care services, poorer levels of average health and nutrition, and greater exposure to pathogens that cause infection all contribute to the shorter survival in Africa. It is difficult to stop the flood of AIDS cases in Africa because it is not yet known by researchers the factors that contribute to outstanding prevalence of the disease among heterosexuals. This diagnosis will help determine how likely it is that heterosexual epidemics will spread to Asia or the West.

Even though AIDS is heavily researched, its origin still remains a partial mystery. It is know that HIV is a zoonosis, a human disease acquired from animals. The virus evolved from a Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV): a type of slow virus found naturally in monkeys and apes which, while not harming the host, produces diseases in other primates (Caldwell 97). How the virus crossed species is still unclear, though. Researchers are unable to identify a specific origin, and if they were able to, they would automatically be accusing someone or something, which would be difficult to accept knowing that it was responsible for inflicting Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) on the world. Consequentially, the biological and geographical origins of the HIV virus remain vague. However, the virus still represents one the deadliest threats to human life in the developing world, where 90 percent of all infected person reside (Caldwell 98).

HIV is most well established in sub-Saharan Africa, where 23.5 million people infected with virus live (UNAIDS 4). Since this is the most unprepared place for the epidemic it makes it extremely difficult for people to receive care. It is becoming clearer that HIV threatens to wipe out fragile development gains achieved over many decades. The United Nations Development Program calculates that 50 percent of Africans will live to 60, compared with an average of 70 percent for all developing countries and 90 percent for industrialized countries (UNAIDS 6). As a result, it greatly threatens the development in Africa, impacting it on all levels. At the continental level, of the 23 million people living with HIV/AIDS, most will die in the next 5-10 years, joining the 13.7 million Africans already killed, leaving behind broken families and crippled prospects for development (Est. Death 60). The virus has already surpassed malaria as the major killer in Africa, but its structural impact threatens to be even more destructive. Across the continent, life expectancy at birth rose by 15 years from 44 years in the early 1950's to 59 in the early 1990's, thanks to AIDS the figure is set recede back to 44 between 2005 and 2010 (UNAIDS 6).

Economically, AIDS has taken its toll across Africa. Recent evidence shows that companies doing business in Africa are suffering as a consequence and are bracing themselves for far worse as their workers frequently become sick and die. According to a survey of commercial farms in Kenya, illness and death have already replaced old-age retirement as the leading reason why employees leave service (Tatum 12). On one sugar estate, a quarter of the entire workforce was infected with HIV. Direct cash costs related to HIV rose dramatically with company's trying to keep up with