Worldwide it was estimated that there were 33 million people living with HIV in addition to 2 million HIV-related deaths in 2007. These figures were felt disproportionately in Sub-Saharan Africa, however. That region alone accounted for 67% of people living with HIV and for 75% of HIV-related deaths during that year. In other words, an estimated 22 million people were living with HIV (including 1.9 million new infections) while another 1.5 million people died of HIV-related causes. If both the rate of infection and the death-rate were evenly distributed across the year it would mean that there were 5206 new infections and 4110 deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa every single day *.
There is a question underlying these figures, however, and that is: What does it all amount to? How are these statistics expressed in the daily realities faced by the people of Sub-Saharan Africa? For that information there is no better place to look than Stephanie Nolen’s ’28: Stories of AIDS in Africa’.
From the characters and stories portrayed in ’28’, The Globe & Mail’s Africa Correspondent Stephanie Nolen clearly demonstrates how HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa translates into every day life. When asked, “Why single out this disease when there is so much ‘wrong’ in Africa? Why is AIDS any different from the famines and the wars and the corruption and the dozens of other terrible diseases, the shortage of schools and clinics and clean water?” Nolen responds with the following:
There is a question underlying these figures, however, and that is: What does it all amount to? How are these statistics expressed in the daily realities faced by the people of Sub-Saharan Africa? For that information there is no better place to look than Stephanie Nolen’s ’28: Stories of AIDS in Africa’.
From the characters and stories portrayed in ’28’, The Globe & Mail’s Africa Correspondent Stephanie Nolen clearly demonstrates how HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa translates into every day life. When asked, “Why single out this disease when there is so much ‘wrong’ in Africa? Why is AIDS any different from the famines and the wars and the corruption and the dozens of other terrible diseases, the shortage of schools and clinics and clean water?” Nolen responds with the following:
“The difference is that AIDS underlies all of these things – that it is amplifying the damage even as it undermines the ability to respond. Because it targets the young, productive generation, AIDS robs countries of the people who grow the food and work in the factories and teach in the schools. It makes existing epidemics of tuberculosis and malaria a thousandfold more lethal. It makes countries more vulnerable to political instability and environmental disasters. In country after country, AIDS is stealing away the hard-won gains of the past couple of decades, lowering school enrolments, productivity levels, life expectancies, child survival rates and economic growth.”
A Day for Africa reproduced the preceding material from Stephanie Nolen's book ‘28: Stories of AIDS in Africa’ by permission of the author.
Put bluntly the need is critical.
To learn how A Day for Africa addresses The Need, click on The Program.
For more information on Stephanie Nolen’s ’28: Stories of AIDS in Africa’ visit www.28stories.com
To learn more about the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS visit www.unaids.org
* Statistics cited from the 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic.
A Day for Africa reproduced the preceding material from Stephanie Nolen's book ‘28: Stories of AIDS in Africa’ by permission of the author.
Put bluntly the need is critical.
To learn how A Day for Africa addresses The Need, click on The Program.
For more information on Stephanie Nolen’s ’28: Stories of AIDS in Africa’ visit www.28stories.com
To learn more about the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS visit www.unaids.org
* Statistics cited from the 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic.
"The project is inspired, and it does wonderful things to make people aware." - Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa (2001-2006)
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