| Stephanie Nolen, award-winning Africa correspondent for The Globe and Mail, gave a free public talk on the African AIDS crisis at the University of Calgary on Wednesday, November 30 – World AIDS Day. The effects of AIDS are something Nolan faces every day as a journalist in Africa, and is something she is vehemently passionate about.
"I agree to do (these talks) because the things I see every day make it clear that this is the most pressing health issue in the world today," says Nolen, who spoke with Fast Forward prior to her Calgary appearance. "Africa is disintegrating before the very eyes of people who live there."
According to a report released on November 23 by the World Health Organization, sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the worst-hit region, with HIV occurrence surpassing 25 per cent of the population. In Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, prevalence rates still exceed 30 per cent among pregnant women. Life expectancy has dropped below 40 years in nine countries in the region.
"You go into communities in some of these countries, and there are no teachers in the schools, no people to do the farming or look after the children," says Nolen. "It’s just full of children and old people – the whole middle generation are gone."
Nolen says there’s no need for this to be happening. "The drugs are there and they’re cheap. It’s not like there’s nothing we can do about this, it’s that we just don’t care."
Poverty is at the root of the AIDS pandemic in Africa and Nolen says until this is addressed by Western nations, things won’t get better. It will take a big commitment by governments and more than just a few donations to make a difference.
"There are young women selling sex to feed themselves. AIDS is a risk, but they’re starving, so (hunger) becomes their immediate threat," she says. "They sell sex to survive."
Nolen says Prime Minister Paul Martin’s government has done more to help the situation than previous Canadian governments, but it will take more political will – Canada has to want to help, and our government needs to influence the United States to get more involved, as well. She suggests the most useful things for governments to do are to forgive African debt and to lower trade barriers. Barriers against exports such as coffee and cotton are dramatically hurting African economies.
Nolen says Western countries need to do extended, targeted, bilateral assessments of the issues and also supply health-care staff for the short term, so African nations can open more of their own health-care facilities.
She hopes that her public talks will help people understand the magnitude of what’s happening.
"It’s a horrible and painful death, but if you are dying of AIDS in Calgary, it is a relatively comfortable death – in a hospital with drugs," says Nolen. "I’ve met people in Africa who are a few weeks away from dying and are in horrific pain. They say to me, ‘If I was in your country, I wouldn’t look like this.’" |
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