The Washington Post has a June 20, 2007 article titled Spread of AIDS in Africa is Outpacing Treatment. It's a powerful article, well worth reading. An excerpt:
... Doctors are not winning -- and probably cannot win -- the war against the epidemic, because it is spreading far more quickly than doctors are treating its victims. Even as billions of dollars are spent expanding access to antiretroviral drugs, the goal of controlling AIDS in Africa remains remote.
"At the moment, I just see a never-ending sea of disaster," said [Francois] Venter, 37, the dark-haired, long-limbed president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society.
Underlying his frustration are grim statistics: For every South African who started taking antiretroviral drugs last year, five others contracted HIV, the same ratio as on the continent as a whole, U.N. reports say. A South African turning 15 today has a nearly 50 percent chance of contracting the virus in his or her lifetime, research shows
What's the problem? There's been an insufficient emphasis on AIDS prevention. Instead, the emphasis has been on treatment, less on curbing behavior. As the Post article says,
The problem is not the medicine, which is among the most
powerful in the world. In places such as the United States and Europe, where prevention programs were already succeeding against much smaller epidemics, the arrival of antiretroviral drugs was a turning point in the battle against AIDS.
But in sub-Saharan Africa, prevention programs have mostly failed to curb the behavior -- especially the habit of maintaining several sexual partners at a time -- that drives the epidemic, research indicates.
The Family Research Council comments on the article this way:
The problem, according to one South African AIDS expert, is that (as the Post describes it), "using antiretrovirals to fight an AIDS epidemic is akin to using chemotherapy and surgery to fight lung cancer. It would cost less, and save many more lives, to find some way to curb smoking." Or, in the case of AIDS, to curb practices like having multiple sex partners. That's exactly what the "abstinence" and "being faithful" (AB) components of President Bush's AIDS relief plan (called PEPFAR) target. Currently, 20% of the plan's funding is designated for prevention (80% goes for treatment) and only a third of that 20% is reserved for the "AB" approach. Yet incredibly, Democrats in Congress want to give AIDS bureaucrats a license to slash even that modest commitment. Tell your Congressman to support a continued firm commitment to abstinence and fidelity in AIDS relief.