The 4th International AIDS Society conference is currently taking place in Sidney, Australia. Prevention and access to AIDS treatment are among the core issues being addressed. The case of Africa is particularly dramatic: 25.8 million people are HIV positive in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to 1.2 million in North America and 0.7 million in Western Europe! Access to treatment is similarly shocking: 90% and 70% of infected people get treatment in Western Europe and North America, respectively, compared to 17% in sub-Saharan Africa!
Le Monde provides a revealing world map of the AIDS epidemic. The map below, from Worldmapper.org, is also quite striking. It shows the proportion of all people aged 15-49 with HIV. “In 2003, the highest HIV prevalence was Swaziland, where 38%, or almost 4 in every 10 people aged 15 to 49 years, were HIV positive. All ten territories with the highest prevalence of HIV are in Central and Southeastern Africa.”
Exactly 20 years ago, ACT UP declared that the AIDS epidemic was a political crisis. As the map above clearly shows, this crisis has become global.
UPDATE: You may want to read two recent articles about the economics of the AIDS epidemic. One written by Mead Over on the Center for Global Development website and the other by William Easterly in the New York Review of Books.
