HIV in Africa

A lot of the publicity insists we need to give expensive HIV drugs and condoms and voila, HIV will disappear from Africa.
This report says whoa: it's more complicated than that...

In a second situation, which would be medically focused, prevention measures would not be stepped up, so anti-retroviral drugs would be easier to obtain than good nutrition and clean water. In this approach, government leaders would fail to get ahead of the AIDS epidemic, and Africa's poverty and underdevelopment would deepen. Keeping such services at today's level would cost $4 billion a year by 2025.

Yup...sounds about right.

What you don't know is that that is what your tax dollars were doing for years.

When I was in Africa 20 years ago, every village had a pill lady, but NO CLEAN WATER, (major cause of child death was diarrhea) NO anti malaria medication or mosquito spraying, no cheap vitamins for pregnant ladies, and many had no certified midwives, immunization clinics, or even health workers to give out WHO rehydration fluid to treat diarrhea...

Our hospital got outside money to provide all these things in the villages served under our hospital...but many areas of Africa still don't have them, especially since much of the aid money goes to Swiss bank accounts of government officials, or cannot reach people because of war or because governments like Zimbabwe's Mugabe prevent aid from reaching political opponants...