Anup Shah
28 October 2008
analysis
Between 1999 and 2000 more people died of AIDS in Africa than in all the wars on the continent, as mentioned by the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan.
The death toll is expected to have a severe impact on many economies in the region. In some nations, it is already being felt. Life expectencies in some nations is already decreasing rapidly, while mortality rates are increasing.
[2000] began with 24 million Africans infected with the virus. In the absence of a medical miracle, nearly all will die before 2010. Each day, 6,000 Africans die from AIDS. Each day, an additional 11,000 are infected. - Lester R. Brow
Lack of Action by Some African Leaders
As many African countries have moved towards democratization, they have been rewarded with the debts of their previously unaccoun-ted dictators, most of whom embezzled billions of dollars from their own country into private savings. Obstruction by some major pharmaceutical companies (detailed further below) has also contributed to the hampered responses of many governments. The current and future generations are thus paying for this with their own lives.
While poverty is undoub-tedly a crucial factor as to why health problems are so severe in Africa (also detailed further below), political will of national governments is paramount, despite disheartening odds. Constraints such as social norms and taboos, or lack of decisive or effective institu-tions have all contributed to the situation getting worse.
In South Africa, a relatively wealthy African nation, President Thabo Mbeki had long denied AIDS resulting from HIV. Only through public outrage and international pressure was he forced to admit that there is a problem.
However, other nations in Africa have shown a more proactive response to the crisis.
Belated International/Western Media Attention to AIDS in Africa
Noted earlier, the impor-tance of aid donations to helping fight AIDS is high. However, while AIDS in Africa is now on the agenda in many first world countries, and often received reasonable media attention, it has taken a long time to report on the crisis and reflect the concerns of citizens in those countries to help address this problem.
By 1990, the sense of urgency about AIDS in wealthy nations had also started to dissipate. "In the '90s it became clear we were not going to have a major heterosexual epidemic in the States," said Michael Merson, who would succeed Mann at the WHO program. AIDS "was no longer a threat to the West."
Foege, the former [US federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] CDC director, now teaches at Emory University. He has a maxim for his public health students: "Tie the needs of the poor with the fears of the rich. When the rich lose their fear, they are not willing to invest in the problems of the poor."
What is also disturbing is how the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa only become real western mainstream media news headlines around the time HIV and AIDS was declared a national security threat to the United States. While it it understandable that a media may reflect concerns in its own nation, it is another example of the mainstream coverage and their priorities, especially when there is a lot to report in terms of western economic policies seen through the various international institutions that have increased poverty, an important factor in the spread of AIDS.
Major western media outlets also claim to be the best sources of world news, yet the items covered seem driven by the agenda of rich nations, not of the actual events around the world. (See this site's section on mainstream media for more on that angle.)
Western politicians were concerned about the plight of Kosovars leading up to the Kosovo crisis, but there was not a similar concern for people on the continent of Africa, where far more have died from AIDS (already in the millions-approximately 11 million people around the beginning of 1999-by the time concern for Kosovo was raised. This is not to belittle the situation in Kosovo, but to help put it in pers-pective).
Now that it is a direct concern for some western countries as well, there is increased reporting on the situation in Africa as well. Could the same interest in African affairs earlier helped raise awareness and the urgency for help earlier?
When Brown and Hall first proposed to study the pheno-menon in 1987, they could not obtain CIA approval for use of personnel and computer modeling resources. Internal critics declared global AIDS an unfit subject of intelligence, or said the impact on U.S. interests would be benign.
Speaking of one military colleague at the National Intelligence Council, Brown said, "His penetrating analysis was, 'Oh, it will be good, because Africa is over-populated anyway.' Others were saying, 'It may be big, but what are you going to do about it?'" Still others, Brown recalled, discounted the likelihood of damage to allied militaries. If officers began dying of the disease, they said, "That boosts morale, because there's more room for advancement."
Another security official, recalling those debates, said critics reasoned that Africa's limitless pool of unemployed men left armies with plenty of reinforcements. "If you have one 18-year-old with a Kalashnikov [rifle] and he dies, you find another 18-year-old," he said. "The cold truth was that the impact on military stability was minimal."
Western Pharmaceutical Companies' Reaction to AIDS in Africa
AIDS policy is now a key world commodity-right up there with shiploads of computers, crude oil and wheat.
Accompanying the concern of the belated western media attention is the action of the multinational pharma-ceutical companies and their lobbying efforts in first world countries and international forums, which reveal they are more worried for their profits than the plight of African nations, for they have resisted African nations' attempts to use generic versions of their expensive drugs or pursue other related policies.
Currently, treatments, which Medicines Sans Frontiers describe as having "transformed HIV/AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic disease in developed countries", are expensive and affordable by mainly the wealthier people in western countries. However, poor people-including those in industrialized nations-are the major victims of HIV and AIDS.
On July 19, 2000, the Export-Import Bank of the United States offered $1 billion per year for five years in loans to Sub-Saharan Africa to finance the purchase of U.S. HIV/AIDS medications and related equipment and services from U.S. pharmaceutical firms. However, three southern African countries, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe rejected the offer because the loans would further the dependency and debt of African countries, while American pharmaceutical corporations would benefit. Another criticism such motions have received is that this ends up benefitting those companies who, in effect, get a free subsidy. In this way, U.S. corporate interests are advanced.
Oxfam went as far as accusing some corporations of contributing to human rights violations by trying to prevent access to the needed drugs:
Oxfam believes that 39 of the world's biggest drug companies are contributing to a gross breach of human rights in South Africa and has today called on the United Nations to investigate.
Numerous pharmaceutical companies took South Africa to court at the beginning of March 2001, over language in the Medicines Act which would allow for generic production and parallel importing of affordable AIDS drugs.
However, the public outrage around the world that resulted from these companies trying to do such a thing while people were dying led to them drop their case in April, 2001.
That was only part of the battle that South Africa won, and at some cost:
People concerned by globalisation frequently invoke the spectre of the growing might of corporations, which are seen as claiming ever greater chunks of influence in global policy setting. Rarely has this picture been drawn as clearly as in a recent court case in South Africa, in which the government of the country with more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other was locked into a fierce struggle with an industry doing everything possible to preserve its profits.
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