About Aids
Excerpted from The Skeptic's Guide to the Global AIDS Crisis by Dale Hanson Bourke
Just how bad is the international AIDS crisis?
HIV/AIDS is the biggest public health problem the world has ever faced. It has already surpassed the bubonic plague, which wiped out twenty-five million people—one quarter of Europe’s population at the time. An estimated three million people die each year from AIDS, a death toll that has been compared to twenty fully loaded 747s crashing every single day for a year.
HIV/AIDS has now spread to every country in the world. In most cases, the rate of infection and death is increasing rapidly. Although the highest number of infected people live in Africa, countries in Asia are showing a rapid rate of growth. Reported AIDS cases are rising so swiftly in China and India that they could eventually eclipse the numbers in Africa.
HIV/AIDS typically infects people in the prime of life, depriving children of their parents, and communities of their most productive workers. In some countries more than one-third of the population is infected, effectively wiping out an entire generation.
Since many people are HIV positive for years without showing symptoms, no one really knows the magnitude of the problem. Most people in poorer countries are never tested, and many that die of AIDS-related infections are officially listed as succumbing to tuberculosis or malaria in order to keep their families from being stigmatized.
Most estimates show the rate of infection and death growing at a high rate at least until 2010, even with aggressive worldwide interventions. Experts from various disciplines agree that the problems associated with AIDS will dominate the entire twenty-first century.
To learn more about the AIDS pandemic, click
here.
To discover the predominant myths about the AIDS crisis, click
here.
Copyright 2006 by Dale Hanson Bourke, published by Authentic Publishing. May not be reproduced without permission.
