Sub-Saharan Africa Essay, Research Paper
Sub-Saharan Africa has turn into a ”virtual killing field” with the world s worst undeclared war. What do you do when an epidemic with no cures sweeps through a nation? What do you do when you don t have the needed resources to contain the disease with treatment? What do you do when most people within the population do not even know they carry disease? AIDS is rapidly killing off the population of Africa.
According to the UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/ AIDS), AIDS is now the leading killer in sub-Saharan Africa, where 23.3 million people have HIV or AIDS; 90% of the world s 11 million AIDS orphans are in Africa; in 1998, 200,000 African died from war – but 2.2 million died from HIV/AIDS. These figures are harshly alarming and call for immediate attention and action. The United States currently spends more than $800m a year fighting HIV infection, the annual figure in Africa – where at least two thirds of the world’s HIV infected people live – the figure is only $160m. These figures don t just add up when it comes to proportionality. Addressing the massive inequalities in money available to tackle the disease is a must.
Fewer than 200,000 in every 20 million men know they have the disease. When you think of AIDS, you think of unprotected sex and how slapping on a condom will stop the rising epidemic. Slapping on a condom works when the problem is not an epidemic. Condoms are great protective agents but mistakes and misues occur often. Slapping on a condom to the 23.3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa already affected will do nothing for these individuals.
Battling the rising epidemic of AIDS is not going to be solved by leaving it to Africa s leaders, neighboring countries with needed resources need must get involve. It would be great to say the entire world will get involve but that is not likely. Many people in Africa do not have the resources we have in the America to buy condoms and to seek professional help. We can not just give resources to Africa we have to make them easily accesible to the entire population. Most individuals with AIDS unfortunatley do not know they carry the deadily disease. Leaders of African nations are not making their villages and communities aware of the problem.
The first step needs to be to make the community and villages aware the problem and the risk. By doing this we make people aware of the epidemic and individuals can began to take extra precautions. We need to set up free 24/ hour anonymous AIDS testing in various locations so individuals can be tested with no strings attach. It may cost a great detail to put up these locations but the cost will be quite benefical in the years to come. To figure out solutions we need to look at where the problem rooted .
Unsanitary vaccination campaigns by the French in central Africa in the early 1900s might have allowed HIV to take root. Jim Moore, an anthropologist at the University of California at San Diego, points to evidence that one clinic used just six needles to immunize more than 89,000 people against sleeping sickness in 1916. The French colonial government that ruled west equatorial Africa then enacted a brutal policy of using forced labor for large construction projects. Congo-Ocean railway built between 1921 and 1934 in an area then called the French Congo. 0ver 20,000 people died working on the of malnutrition. They people who survived were lacking food and going to desperate measures to get food.
Bruce Fetter, a social historian of colonial Africa at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, said If they were underfed, they might have gone off and trapped animals in the forest because they were hungry. The connection we are trying to make is the railroad’s location near the earliest known case of HIV. The location is just across the river Congo from the city of Kinshasa, where the 1959 HIV-positive plasma sample was taken. Moore also concludes, “It probably would have been the first time people were trying to capture chimps alive. And you’re a lot more likely to get bitten by a live one.”
The French in more ways then one should be held partially responsible for the growing epidemic. Since when do you use six needles to immunize 89,000 people. They were trying to be cheap and it consequences have been highly costly. The Tuskegee Experiment of the 1930 s, when black individuals were wrongly given the disease Syphilis, later in1972 became liable for their wrongdoing. The government made a $9 million settlement to the Tuskegee survivors and the descendants of those who had died.
Sub-Saharan African needs to sue the French for their wrongs in a court of law. It would be impossible for the French to give settlements to everyone caught in the epidemic but they can give money to provide needed resources, better doctors, and food. Many people cannot live long with the disease because their bodies are already malnutrition. Africa s money supply is low; therefore, they need help with finances.
Africa must stop their process of immunizations taking place within the country. Needles are being used for more than one patient because resources are limited. Sharing needles puts people at risk for dangerous infections, such as the HIV virus. We want to believe that Africa is just a country with a lot of sexual activity but that just does not add up. HIV and AIDS are greatly increasing everyday the disease is passing by other means like needle exchange in immunizations. Thousands of people can be infected by one needle. It is not just the sex killing off people. The immunization process must be changed.
With the French putting up money for treatment and research we can really get to the core of the problem. Africa is in fact has the most natural resources as far as medicines and herbs. It is the number one place for homeopathic medicine, natural medicine. With good resources and western medicine doctors from America, were all the money is, we can come together can truly find better treatment forms and maybe even a cure. American and Africa must unite as one on this problem. America has the western doctors and money while Africa has the natural resources needed for medicine. When you put two and two together you have a powerful match.
A point we would truly like to investigate is how is AIDS and HIV is infecting 23.3 million in sub-Saharan Africa were all the black people live and very few in places were the white shippers, merchants, and traders live close to the Mediterranean Sea. This just does not make sense. Only the African people are being infected when other races live in the upper part of Africa. I wonder because many studies say when African countries regained their freedom they just got wild. When we compare this epidemic to the relatively small number of African American who encountered Syphilis in America in the 1930 s. At this time in America history Jim Crow Laws were becoming banned and whites were losing their superior power over blacks. Blacks were targets for Syphilis. Many claimed it was a study but why weren t any whites being target? Why is the white population in Africa exempted for the epidemic?
Some foul play is believed to be going from our point of view. Many Africans are no longer prisoners in their own country. White powers have less power. Could this be a tactic to control blacks or even kill them off? Africa is a continent with resources many other places lack and what. Neighboring countries have been trying for thousands of years to strip Africa of its one of a kind resources. Whites no longer control Africa s freedom, so they must create a homeostasis un-balanced to destroy them. They tried it in American what makes you think they wont try it in Africa.