AFRICA STALKED BY AIDS By Eric S Margolis July 16 2000 Basel, Switzerland - Last AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa reminded me of two eerie premonitions I had of the dreaded HIV epidemic. Back in 1978, when I was living in New York's West Village, community newspapers kept reporting mysterious ailments among homosexual men, notably never-before-seen fungal infections, respiratory disorders, and skin lesions. The victims would waste away, then die. The only common thread at the time was that many of the sufferers had visited male brothels in Haiti. It wasn't until 1981 that these symptoms were recognized as a new scourge, AIDS. Eight years later, I was flying over remote southern Angola with South African intelligence officers. They pointed out to me abandoned villages that were being swallowed up by the advancing bush. The villagers had died of AIDS. Entire regions of Angola were being depopulated. Cuban troops sent to fight in Angola brought HIV back to their island. Fourteen years later, the AIDS epidemic continues unabated. According to figures just in Switzerland by the World Health Organization, in some parts of black Africa, 25% of the population is infected by HIV through heterosexual sex. Thirty million people are infected worldwide, says the WHO. Seventy percent, or 21 million, are in sub-Saharan black Africa.). Certain African states - Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe - are particularly afflicted. Four million Indians are also infected, though this represents only 1% of India's huge population. AIDS, the conference reported, is now a pandemic rivaling the medieval Black Death that killed 20 million people in Europe, and the post World War I influenza epidemics that killed 28 million worldwide. AIDS is also rivaling the principal killer diseases, malaria, infantile diarrhea, and tuberculosis - all endemic in black Africa. While many forms of HIV can now be arrested or suppressed by a very expensive drug cocktails, such treatment is unaffordable for Africans. The conference reported no progress in arresting the lethal spread of HIV. The main reason: the anti-HIV campaign is based on promoting use of latex condoms. African men simply refuse to use them. So, in truth, do many men around the world. Using a condom, male or female variety, reduces sexual pleasure by anywhere from 50-100%. It's like taking a bath with your clothes on. One has all of effort and expense of sex without the feeling. For many men, attempting to get a condom unrolled and positioned is awkward and often unsuccessful, resulting in loss of erection. The biggest advocates of condoms are often those who are not particularly sexually active. The simplest answer to HIV is not more wildly expensive drugs, but improved, thinner condoms made from a film polymer that can be sprayed on the male, or applied as a gel by the woman in foreplay, providing barrier protection with minimal loss of sensation. Condom technology has advanced little in recent years. Why not invest in condom research in addition to exotic drugs? The Durban meeting also confirmed a fascinating theory that has been discussed for years: circumcised men appear far less susceptible to HIV than uncircumcised men. In Muslim parts of black Africa, where men are circumcised, the AIDS rate is below 1%; in non-Muslim regions where circumcision is not practiced, the AIDS rate is 10 to 20 times higher. Circumcised men also have a far lower rate of other sexually transmitted diseases. Interestingly, the AIDS rate in Arab Africa north of the Sahara is below .5%. Strict mores against pre or extra-marital sex in Muslim societies likely plays a role in lower HIV transmission. By contrast, black Africans are sexually active from puberty onwards with many different partners. Haiti, curiously, shows the same sexual disease profile as black Africa, suggesting that genetics may play an important, but as yet unknown, role in HIV susceptibility. Here in Europe, young people are being scared silly by terrifying warnings they will catch AIDS if they have unprotected sex - or any kind of sex, for that matter. Small wonder Europe's birth rates are plummeting. Intravenous drug use, not heterosexual sex, is the main vector for AIDS in Europe and former USSR. In North America, deaths from AIDS were under 25,000 last year, hardly en epidemic on a continent of over 300 million people, but still very worrisome. Most victims were IV drug users or poor and black. Alarmist predictions of a few years ago that HIV would explode into the heterosexual mainstream proved to be hot air - as are some of the current dire predictions about the globe being engulfed by HIV. Among all the hand-wringing over Africa's plight, few have stopped to consider: A. no one paid any attention to Africa's public health until recently. People there routinely died in their 30's. My own view is that AIDS was always present in sub-Saharan Africa, just not recognized. B. Africans are so debilitated by chronic parasitic infections, fungi, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies that HIV provides the coup de grace, carrying off the weakest. For Africa, better rural medical clinics, better nutrition, and thinner condoms are a faster and more realistic answer to the current plague than magic bullet vaccines that have yet to be invented. Copyright eric margolis 2000 War at the Top of the World - The struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet - by Eric Margolis is available at major book outlets and online in both the US and Canada - recently reviewed in The Economist as "His account of recent warfare in Asia's highest mountains is both gripping and instructive." To send *personal mail* to Eric Margolis, please do not click reply, but use this link: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ************** To UNSUBSCRIBE to this list click the following link and enter the words UNSUBSCRIBE FOREIGNC in the body of the email. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
