|
|
The Scourge of AIDS in Developing Countries.
As the AIDS pandemic stretched into
its second decade, no corner of the globe seemed immune from its deadly touch.
Each year added millions from all over the world to the rolls of HIV-infected
people, who would number 33.4 million by the end of 1998. But the numbers were
not evenly distributed. As the 1990s progressed, the toll of illness and death
fell most harshly on developing countries. In 1998, for example, of 5.8 million
new cases of HIV infection reported by United Nations AIDS officials, 1.2 million
would come from South and Southeast Asia, and a staggering 4 million from sub-Saharan
Africa.
In Africa, AIDS had reached the dimensions
of a plague, sharply lowering life expectancy and even threatening to depopulate
some countries. In Zimbabwe, for instance, where an estimated 26 percent of
adults were infected with HIV in 1997, life expectancy had begun to decline
dramatically, from 61 years in 1993 to a projected 49 years by the end of the
centuryand perhaps as low as 40 ten years after that.
Similar figures were being reported
for Botswana, and other nations--including Uganda, Malawi, and parts of South
Africa--were considered likely to follow suit. By the late 1990s, the 34 nations
that made up the sub-Saharan region would account for 91 percent of AIDS deaths
in the world.
For the millions of newly HIV-infected
people in Africa, there was little hope of treatment. The expensive drug combinations
available in developed countries at a cost of roughly $15,000 per person annually
were far beyond the reach of most sub-Saharan nations, where per capita expenditures
on health care were commonly as low as $5.00 to $10.00 a year.
Many clinics in the region were unable
to maintain adequate stocks of basic medicines and supplies, let alone the sophisticated
drugs used to keep HIV at bay; few had the capacity even to provide screening
for the virus, or counseling for those who tested positive.
The lack of facilities and funds
made the plight of pregnant women infected with HIV especially poignant. Their
numbers were growing steadily: in countries like Uganda, South Africa and Malawi,
as many as 40 percent of pregnant women were estimated to be HIV-positive. Untreated,
roughly one in four or five could be expected to give birth to an HIV-positive
baby; those infants who escaped infection at birth faced roughly a 14 percent
chance of becoming infected through breastfeeding.
Thus far, hospitals and clinics in
the region had been powerless to do anything to protect the babies of HIV-positive
women from infection. And, it was widely agreed, the exciting discovery of the
076 regimen did nothing to alter that harsh reality. 
|
