AIDS

Here are a couple things I have been learning from my book:

"AIDS is the biggest public health problem the world has ever faced. It has already surpassed the bubonic plaugue...An estimated 3 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." Another statistic said that 8,500 people die from AIDS every day. So many people!

The drugs only reach one out of five people suffering from AIDS. While there are considerable expenses in getting people in developing countries the drugs they need, the main expense comes from the patents held by the drug companies. Several generic medicines are being made, but the US cannot endorse them unless they are tested and approved by the FDA. Some pressure is being put on drug companies to allow the drugs to be produced without the patent fee for people in developing countries so that it would be more accessible, but there is little progress yet. The drugs remain expensive or inaccessible even though they are relatively cheap to produce.

I found another quote that said "Africa is America's neighbor. Africa is Europe's neighbor. We are daily standing by while millions of people die for the stupidest reason of all: money." Though I know very little about the conditions of the AIDS crisis, my reading has been unsettling. Helping AIDS patients doesn't have to be as expensive as it is!

There's really not a whole lot of meat to this, I suppose, but being aware of what is going on seems to be important. So there you go.