Knowledge is power: Learn the basics about the fight against global poverty and disease.
Let me tell you more about HIV/AIDS,
HIV/AIDS is a treatable and preventable disease that disproportionately affects the world's poor. Sub-Saharan Africa is the hardest hit region, where two-thirds of all people are living with HIV. The human impact of this disease is undeniable, but their socioeconomic impact is also severe and measureable. In sub-Saharan Africa especially, AIDS threatens to wipe out an entire generation during its most productive years. Businesses are losing their workers, governments are losing their civil servants and families are losing not only their loved ones but also their breadwinners.
The immense human toll of AIDS in the late 1990s injected a new urgency into the need to enhance prevention and treatment efforts. Though the resources to fight this disease have increased exponentially in recent years, funding remains too little and too slow in coming. Moreover, weak health systems have limited success in the fight against HIV, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The shortage of health workers, for example, is one of the biggest hurdles in expanding treatment and prevention efforts. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 24% of the global burden of disease, but only 3% of the world's health workforce. Already stretched doctors, nurses and pharmacists, as well as the systems and facilities that support them, must be strengthened to address HIV/AIDS, but also to ensure better basic health outcomes overall.
The Opportunity:
New momentum in the fight against HIV/AIDS, has helped extend effective and affordable prevention and treatment services to millions of people. Antiretroviral medication for people living with HIV/AIDS now costs approximately $140 per patient per year, down from nearly $10,000 only ten years ago.
Global resources devoted to fighting this disease have been rapidly scaled up in recent years, delivering impressive results in many sub-Saharan African countries. Across sub-Saharan Africa, expanded access to life-saving antiretroviral treatment has meant that an AIDS diagnosis is no longer a death sentence for millions of people. Nearly 4 million Africans are receiving antiretroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS, up from only 50,000 in 2002. Botswana and Rwanda have achieved universal access to antiretroviral therapy by providing treatment to at least 80% of patients in need. In Benin, Ethiopia, Mali, Namibia, Senegal, Swaziland and Zambia more than half of people in need of antiretroviral medication are receiving it and coverage levels are approaching the 80% target.
