I hope the first post was a good introduction to the kind of material we will cover in this BLOG.

We now begin in earnest…

AIDS and Africa.

By now, I believe that most people have some idea that an AIDS epidemic is raging in Africa. Aid agencies and volunteers strangely face opposition from the government, which has persistently declared that there is no connection between the disease and the virus (H.I.V.), resulting in the deliberate withholding or slow delivery of anti-retroviral drugs that can potentially save the lives of thousands.

This is indeed a strange debate, with many different facets. Fear of ‘western’ medicine, and the belief that westerners are trying to harm the population is one of them. Another is loud-voiced opposition to the connection between H.I.V. and AIDS from the so-called ‘denialist’ scientists, who maintain that there is no relationship between H.I.V. and AIDS. Yet another is the belief in a vast conspiracy hatched by the pharmaceutical companies, which are incidentally also western.

What ever the arguments, it is always the poor and the uneducated people on the street who lose, and are left to suffer.

I recently came across a fantastic article on the topic in the New Yorker magazine, written by Michael Specter. I am posting a link to the abstract.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/12/070312fa_fact_specter

I will try and get permission to post the entire article here or on a separate website.

Comments welcome.