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Children with AIDS in Africa

From a story by Sharon LaFraniere in the NY Times:

In Lesotho, as throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, children with AIDS were generally considered a lost cause. Treatment, to the extent it existed, was limited to adults, for whom antiretroviral therapy is cheaper and easier. Now, that is slowly changing. Through some charitable foundations, pediatric AIDS medication is available for as little as $200 a year, half of what it used to cost and only $60 more a year than adult medication. Governments, international agencies and private charities have begun to train the region's ragtag health care corps to treat children. Still, only a few children get help. Death comes swiftly for those who go without. Half of all untreated H.I.V.-positive infants die before the age of 2 for lack of medication that can produce transformations seemingly overnight. With medicine, some American infants infected since birth have survived into adulthood and become parents themselves. Specialized and costly tests are needed to determine whether a child under 18 months is infected, although treatment can begin based on symptoms alone. Children are also more complicated to treat, partly because their medication must be constantly adjusted as their height and weight change. And pediatric drugs cost more than adult medication - until recently, up to three times as much. In Lesotho, a nation of 1.8 million encircled by South Africa, more than one in four adults is believed to be infected with H.I.V., the third highest infection rate in the world. Treatment for adults began only in November 2004. Treatment for children followed last April. Caseloads have been swelling ever since. But with an average of one doctor for every 20,000 people, patients sit shoulder-to-shoulder, sometimes waiting more than a day to be seen at a hospital. Health care workers continue to leave for better-paying work in South Africa, Britain or elsewhere. Lesotho officials have yet to treat AIDS like the national emergency it is, said Tim Rwabuhemba, Lesotho director for the United Nations AIDS agency. But other experts praise the government's determination to battle the epidemic, and foundations and charities are beginning to flock here. The World Bank and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria are pouring millions into the national budget for AIDS programs. The Clinton Foundation persuaded one pharmaceutical firm to halve its prices for pediatric AIDS medicines, and is donating the drugs to Lesotho and other nations.

Lord's Resistance Army

If you want to do so, it's a breeze to find a multitude of reasons to be depressed. Folks in Nigeria and Iraq murdering each other daily in the name of religion. Yesterday, Travis Stanley posted some excerpts from a NY Times article about the on-going genocide in Sudan. Yesterday I read an article about Uganda by J. Carter Johnson from ChristianityToday.com:

Sixty years after Allied soldiers liberated the Nazi death camps, the world stands silent in the face of another holocaust-one so horrifying that U.N. officials call it "one of the worst human-rights crises of the past century." The perpetrators commit atrocities with such malevolence that even the most irreligious people familiar with their acts describe them as "unrestrained evil." The targets of the butchery are children. They rape, mutilate, and kill them with a rapaciousness that staggers the imagination. Worse, they compel children to kill one another and their own families, fighting as "soldiers" in an armed force deliberately composed of children. Perhaps the greatest atrocity is teaching these children that they spread this carnage by the power of the Holy Spirit to purify the "unrepentant," twisting Christianity into a religion of horror to their victims. It is spiritual warfare at its very worst, and it could not be more satanic.

The Lord's Resistance Army (what a name) is to blame for the atrocities in Uganda. The most depressing thing is that it is hard to imagine what can be done to fix these problems. Here are the suggestions from the ChristianityToday article about Uganda:

The people most familiar with LRA terrorism agree that the best hope for ending the carnage is putting it on the radar screen of the Western world. Akello Lwanga, a physician, spent two years treating LRA victims at an internally displaced persons camp in Pader. "If Americans saw this on TV as often as they see the Middle East," he said, "it would stop." "People need to see what's happening in northern Uganda," said U.S. ambassador to Uganda Jimmy Kolker. "The suffering of these children is unimaginable. Absolutely, it is important for the public to know about this as a step toward bringing it to an end." Ordinary Christians can help stop LRA terrorism. Presenting the issue to churches, continuing in intercessory prayer over the conflict, donating to Christian agencies that work with Ugandan children, and pressing government officials for action all work to save LRA victims. Michael Oruni, director of Uganda's Children of War Rehabilitation Center, told CT he was urging Christians to get involved: "Imagine your own child taken away, being raped as your family is killed in front of your eyes. If it were you, what would you feel like? "Kids in Uganda-kids just like yours-are taken every night and enslaved, raped, mutilated, murdered. You can make a difference. Talk to your government. Help us."

African childbirth deaths

This requires action.

It's old news, but I was shocked when I read it recently.  African women are 175 times more likely to die in childbirth than women from western nations and have a 1 in 16 chance of dying in childbirth.  Since many women deliver alone or with unskilled attendants, so better access to skilled health care workers and emergency care are required.

Chance of death in childbirth and pregnancy:

  • Sierra Leone, Afghanistan: one in six
  • Angola, Malawi, Niger: one in seven
  • Nepal: one in 24
  • Pakistan: one in 31
  • India: one in 48
  • Malaysia: one in 660
  • China: one in 830
  • US: one in 2,500
  • South Korea: one in 2,800
  • Britain: one in 3,300
  • Japan: one in 6,000
  • Sweden: one in 29,800

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