09/19/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10138

THE U.S. FIGHTS HIV/AIDS

By the end of 2001, forty million people around the world were living with the Human Immune-deficiency Virus, known as H-I-V, or with the disease it causes, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. Seventy percent of those with the deadly virus were living in sub-Saharan Africa. In many of these countries, life expectancy is dropping from more than sixty years to around forty-five. In Botswana, it has dropped to thirty-nine.

The U.S. recognizes that H-I-V and AIDS are a threat to the health and economic well being of all people around the world. The spread of the virus is undermining development and threatens to weaken, or even destabilize, communities and regions.

A World Bank report says that because of AIDS, "labor productivity is likely to drop, the benefits of education will be lost, and resources that would have been used for investments will be used for health care, orphan care, and funerals. Savings rates will decline, and the loss of human capital will affect production and the quality of life for years to come." Within three years, South Africa is projected to lose eleven percent of its workforce to AIDS. Zimbabwe is expected to lose nearly twenty percent.

The U.S. is the single largest donor to international AIDS efforts, focusing on programs that prevent new infections, that reduce risky behavior, that provide treatment and care for those living with the disease, and that address the needs of AIDS orphans. The U.S. also supports programs to strengthen vaccine research and testing and the search for a cure.

Medical experts say that one way to fight the spread of AIDS is by preventing the transmission of the virus from mothers to their newborn children. In June, President George W. Bush announced a plan to expand U.S. efforts to prevent mother-to-child H-I-V infection. The initiative targets fourteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. Within five years, the goal is to treat one million women and to reduce mother-to-child transmission by forty percent.

The U.S. is committed to fighting the spread of AIDS and to helping those who already suffer from it. As President George W. Bush said, "The wasted human lives...are a call to action for every person on the planet and for every government....Medical science," said Mr. Bush, "gives us the power to save these young lives. Conscience demands we do so."