Editor—HIV infection and AIDS have reached a critical level in Africa. We all know that the most important tool we have is health education to create awareness about the disease and make people change their attitudes and eventually their practices, but more has still to be done.
As Editor's choice of 6 January pointed out,1 HIV/AIDS is wiping out the cream of the continent—teachers, doctors, and farmers. The option of prevention has long passed for many. Any amount of education cannot bring back their lives; they can only be taught not to pass the disease on to others.
Doesn't the West think that a single life matters? Now millions in Africa are on death row. What does the West have to say about it? How about the babies born infected through no fault of their own? How much do people in the West talk about mad cow disease in Europe, which does not, as HIV/AIDS does, wipe out a whole generation? Anyone who has the means to save people from dying at the rate that they are in Africa and holds back is perpetrating genocide. Some of the West's wealth was built with the gold and diamonds of Africa and by African slaves breaking their backs in their plantations. Africa's younger generation deserves better treatment from the West.
The West is saying that even if it makes drugs available in Africa we in Africa don't have the means to deliver them to our patients. What nonsense. How about when the West sold the most modern war machinery to Africa? The world recently witnessed one of the most sophisticated wars between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ethiopia has the infrastructure to fly its jet planes. If the West makes the drugs available I am sure that we can deliver them, though we might need a little help to do so.
You in the West must rally round to save lives in Africa. Forget about patents; put patients first. This time it is not about money, it is about lives.
References
- 1.Editor's choice. Africa: a continent for the millennium. BMJ 2001;322(7277). (6 January.)