A rchive Date
[ 25-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Africa ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington.html
The plague of Africa
Money alone won't cure, or control, AIDS
By PETER WORTHINGTON -- Toronto Sun
April 25, 2003
A while back The Sun's own Michael Coren wrote that the money being spent on the war in Iraq was enough to "remove AIDS from Africa."
There are a lot of people who may believe that, but, given the facts, I don't understand how Coren can. Certainly, a lot of people wish eliminating AIDS was simply a matter of money. But it isn't. And certainly not in Africa.
I wonder if Coren reads the British Spectator, the best current affairs magazine around? Pity there's no version of it in North America.
Recently, it published an article by Hugh Russell, who lives in Lusaka, Zambia, and clearly worries at how AIDS rampages through Africa, especially the south. Russell quotes Stephen Lewis, the UN's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, as saying children are dying at a rate of one every 15 minutes.
As for Nelson Mandela's observation that AIDS is "decimating" southern Africa, Russell adds: "Would to God that he was right." One in 10 deaths due to AIDS is modest. Zambia's death rate is around one in five, but in the 15-40 age group it's one in three.
As for controlling the spread of AIDS, much less curing it, money is not the major issue. In fact, Russell suggests that the more money poured into fighting AIDS in Africa is, realistically, to "watch your cash go sluicing down the sink that we call 'donor aid.'"
In Africa, AIDS is not linked to homosexuality, promiscuity, anal sex, dirty needles, etc., as it is in developed countries. In Zambia and Zimbabwe, AIDS is a by-product of a society that "is a complex web of tradition, custom, superstition and folklore" that makes people particularly vulnerable to the HIV virus.
Russell spells out three local customs that make fighting AIDS difficult, if not impossible.
Ritual cleansing
One is ritual cleansing, which involves the "laying of ghosts." The belief is that when a husband dies, the widow must "cleanse the ghost" else she goes mad.
This is done by having sex with a close male relative after her husband dies. If an uncle or relative won't accommodate, she will go to a bar, pretend to be drunk, and have casual sex with anyone, thus ensuring the ghost will be passed on. If the husband died of AIDS, the widow likely passes it on. Otherwise she may contract it during her ritual cleansing.
So firm is this belief that if a young man shows signs of being mentally unstable, people will suggest he must have slept with a widow.
A second custom Russell notes is that of a secret society among youths of the same age. When boys reach puberty, they undergo a ritual, introducing them to manhood. A lifetime bond is forged among them.
In later years, when one of the group visits the home of another, it's traditional that he is offered - and is expected to accept - sexual use of the host's wife. This isn't considered adulterous, but good manners. The risk of spreading AIDS is obvious.
The most lethal custom that few discuss is that many African men like their partners to be virgins. Prostitutes on the infamous African trucking route know this, and use a concoction of roots and herbs that have an astringent quality that dries out their skin and makes a lover, or customer, think she's a reluctant virgin.
Sex for the woman is painful and abrasions and splits occur which increase the likelihood of infection. This practice is difficult to curtail since, as Russell notes: "Prostitutes will, of course, do whatever their clients are willing to pay for, and truck drivers, kings of the road in southern Africa, are not types to have their sexual mores easily reversed."
All this may sound bizarre to those who haven't been exposed to Africa. When I was in Africa writing about the AIDS epidemic nearly 20 years ago, any mention of the subject was forbidden by the governments of Zimbabwe and Zambia. AIDS deaths were supposedly from pneumonia, malaria, heart and lung problems, infections. It is still that way, even though AIDS is widely recognized, and often blamed on CIA or western conspiracies to ravage Africa.
Russell's article points out that the billions promised Africa by U.S. President George Bush in his State of the Union Speech, are unlikely to have much effect. He says expensive anti-retroviral drugs sent to Africa for sale at low cost are being snapped up by racketeers and smuggled back to Europe to be sold at handsome profits.
In short, it's small wonder that Lewis and others are so frustrated. Russell seems to think "prayer" is the only recourse.
I remember asking a doctor in Africa if AIDS might eventually kill the continent. He replied that no, enough humans would eventually become immune to AIDS that the species would survive.
Not encouraging, but probably realistic.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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