Helping to fight AIDS epidemic

By Sarah Scott

At the end of 2005, the World Health Organization's Global Summary of the AIDS Epidemic reported that 40.3 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS. Last year alone, 3.1 million people died of AIDS.

For a generation that hasn't known life without AIDS, it is important for us to understand our potential impact on the fight for universal access to treatment for all those living with HIV/AIDS.

While the WHO and the United Nations' Global Fund to Fight AIDS have taken steps in the right direction, the world has been slow in providing care for those who need it most. Sub-Saharan Africa, which only has 10 percent of the world's population, is home to 60 percent of those living with HIV/AIDS globally. The United States has also acted with the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief -- a pledge of $15 billion over five years for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. PEPFAR will expire in 2008, leaving many wondering what will happen to those benefiting from the fund.

Despite criticisms that PEPFAR is too focused on abstinence-based prevention programs, I believe people are beginning to wake up and face the fact that AIDS will not go away. Our generation most likely will not see the end of AIDS, but we have the power to control its direction. With degrees in progress, university students struggle to find time to help those in sub-Saharan Africa when there are problems with access to health care and education here at home.

I'm not trying to convince you to drop everything, go to Africa and save the world. What I am suggesting is that our generation needs to care about the AIDS pandemic along with those people whose lives and communities have been devastated by this disease.

Recently, two Santa Clara seniors have started an HIV/AIDS community task force that seeks to educate the student body about the importance of their involvement with the epidemic. They are planning events, and it is their hope and mine that people will take an hour or two from their busy schedules to come learn about what can be done to help fight this disease.

HIV/AIDS is multi-faceted, and not limited to those within the medical profession or those who have a calling to social justice. Projects involving politics, economics and sustainable development must be implemented in order to win the fight against global HIV/AIDS.

World AIDS Day is Dec. 1, and with that comes time for reflection on the global devastation caused by the pandemic. Every 11 seconds, somewhere in the world, another life is lost to HIV/AIDS. There is no more time to lose.

Sarah Scott is a senior English major and the director of finance for the HIV/AIDS Community Taskforce.