Kenyan Journal #10: Mass Destruction
Habari gani -Which news?,
I know there are cynics out there who say that there are no WMDs and the whole premise for the war was a sham. But the real message of the missing Osama, the missing Hussein and the missing WMDs is that it's time for round three. And if we don't find any weapons of mass destruction in round three then on to round four. If you've played some Nintendo, you know that as long as we keep going we'll eventually get to the final round and all the "bosses" that have escaped us will be there together with the "big boss" be it Kim Jong Il, Micheal Moore or Dr Evil.
At any rate, we can be happy that democracy is well on its way in Iraq, just like it is in the other countries where the US has recently "intervened" to install a "democracy": Afghanistan, Kosovo and Haiti.
If those countries are any indication, good things are in store for Iraq: Afghanistan is making plea after unanswered plea to the international community for the funds it needs for reconstruction while the US has given one tenth of what it promised. Four years after the end of the war Kosovo continues to hang by a peacekeeping thread over a cauldron of violence. Meanwhile, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 56% of the population suffering from malnutrition, according to the UN. But then one has to question the relevance of the UN, doesn't one?
While Weapons of Mass Illusion in Iraq have been front page news, some other major developments on the international scene are getting less attention.
Sub-saharan Africa is into it's worst famine in over a decade. The famine is being exacerbated by the fact that many farmers are sick or dead from AIDS. This evening, I was speaking with a Kenyan aquaintance who has attended seven funerals in the last two weeks, all for people from his small village. "People are dying" he said.
Flipping through The Nation, I can see that he's right. There are pages and pages of death announcements, the photos predominantly of young adults.
278 million Africans are expected to die of AIDS by 2050. Here in Kenya, we have the fifth highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the world. Most estimates range from five to ten percent of a population of thirty million, though a recent Newsweek put the number at 15.6% and cited the WHO. Out of twenty people, you can expect that one or two of them are HIV positive. It makes walking into the classroom an entirely different experience.
That AIDS is epidemic in Africa has been obvious for quite a while. Stephen Lewis, the former Canadian ambassador to the UN, has been travelling the world attempting to raise awareness about the epidemic for some time.
The news is that GlaxoSmithKline, the largest maker of anti-retroviral(ARV) medication, has drastically reduced the price of ARVs in the developing world. This move is an attempt to forestall intense pressure to allow generic ARV production, which would drop the price much further. The pressure is coming from AIDS activists, who have engaged in mass civil disobedience in South Africa, and from union pension plans, most notably the California Public Employees Retirement System, one of the largest investment funds in the US.
Even at the reduced price, ARVs are far too expensive for most governments in the developing world, though generic production would bring them within reach.
Another major development is the passing of legislation that will see the US government contribute $15B US. Bush spent one and a half times as much on war in Iraq, but Canadians don't have anything to be self-righteous about; our spending in this area is pitiful.
The most important news came about a month ago. The medical community has long believed that AIDS in Africa was spreading largely through hetero-sexual contact. But three recently published papers sent the WHO and UN scurrying to re-evaluate the situation by showing that the primary vector is dirty needles.
No, Africa doesn't have a major intravenous drug problem. These are medical needles. It's the tainted blood scandal on a continental scale. In fact much worse, because it's not limited to transfusion recipients but potentially affects anyone who has even been vaccinated. In other words, the thousands of Canadians infected in our tainted blood scandal are as a speck of dust compared to the victims in Africa.
Remembering the tainted blood scandal, you might expect that the news from Africa would be on the front page of every newspaper. Unfortunately, it seems that mass destruction is only news when we can't find it.
Salama,
Yaacov
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