As national attention remains focused on the Bush Administration?s so-called war on terrorism, and questionable military spending skyrockets by $48 billion, the wealthy nations of the world are largely ignoring a far greater problem: AIDS. With three million deaths each year?2.4 million of these in Africa?and infections skyrocketing to 30 million, America?s most recent pledge to AIDS relief, made last year, totaled a mere $200 million, about 1/5 the cost of one stealth bomber.

While our government?s foreign policy maintains a woefully myopic focus on military solutions to terrorism, it ignores what can truly be described as a holocaust. In Third World countries, where 90 percent of AIDS cases exist, governments are powerless to stop the epidemic. According to a study by the World Health Organization, it would cost $18 billion to sufficiently treat all the AIDS patients in Zimbabwe, or about 265 percent of that country?s entire Gross Domestic Product. Such staggering numbers are far from rare. In Botswana, 35 percent of the adult population is infected. One in four citizens in Swaziland and Zimbabwe are also infected. However incomprehensible, the list goes on.

Many hospitals in these regions can barely cover the cost of basic supplies such as gloves and syringes, let alone treat the infections such as pneumonia, tuberculosis and meningitis that are common as a result of AIDS . Most of the 17 million African victims have died a result of simple neglect. Even in South Africa, one of the wealthiest nations in Africa, only one in 1,000 infected citizens receives any medication. Overall, western nations included, less than two percent of AIDS patients have access to the expensive antiretroviral drugs that prolong survival indefinitely. With infection rates and deaths plummeting in the United States, it may seem to be a distant problem, but the wealthy nations of the world are, at the very least, guilty of inaction. To use ourselves as an example, increasing aid toward prevention and treatment 20 fold would amount to an infinitesimal percentage of the U.S. government?s $2 trillion budget. Other Western governments fair little better. Also, top secret documents reveal early studies by American agencies, such as the CIA, forecasting staggering AIDS deaths by the early 2000s, according to a report by The Washington Post. Surprisingly, the crisis was never brought to the forefront of American policy.

At most, however, U.S. and Western institutions can be held directly responsible for the continued suffering. Multinational medical firms, currently holding an oligopoly on antiretrovirals, continue to lobby international courts for questionable international patent protection for the drugs?keeping drug duplication companies from offering the same medicines for cheap in the Third World. This stance has been supported by the Bush Administration and other governments, in spite of the fact that the drug business is one of the most profitable industries in existence, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. As a result, the drugs cost $1,000 to $2,000 per year in many areas where health spending does not exceed $20 per person annually. In addition, billions of dollars of debt to Western countries often leaves the Third World spending more on loan repayments than AIDS prevention and treatment programs. Thus far my argument has been based on moral grounds. However, according to Secretary of State Colin Powell, fighting this pandemic is essential to our pragmatic national interests as well. Said Powell, “Nations will collapse if we don?t solve these problems.” Powell warned further that the AIDS crisis could destabilize entire regions if efforts aren?t made to combat it. Deteriorating political situations, exacerbated by the crisis, are proving Powell right. President Festus Mogae of Botswana, one of the most prosperous nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, told PBS, “We face no less extinction, because we are seriously affected as a nation, and it is the most productive age groups in the population?that are most seriously affected.” Also, complaints over the government response in South Africa, where more than four million people are infected, has undermined political gains made there in the post apartheid years.

Preventing the situation from spiraling further out of control could help avoid the creation of future failed states where terrorist and paramilitary operations thrive.

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