An estimated amount of 5000 HIV babies are produced everyday. Among forty two million, 20% are HIV positive, making South Africa the largest AIDS infected population throughout the world. This epidemic develops from the daunting background of the people in the third world country as the environmental condition is so poor and also governments’ efforts in approaching the problem had been disappointing.
The main cause of AIDS deaths can be traced all the way back from the countries environmental condition. The terrain, mostly semi-arid, is aggravated by prolonged droughts which make it almost impossible to culture food staples. Starvation and low birth weight become wide spread, causing immune dysfunction and other severe health effects due to malnourishment. Though malnutrition is not a direct cause of AIDS, it should be considered as a necessary diagnosis and as a possible indirect contributing factor to AIDS, other than solely focusing on sexual relations as the only cause (Al-Bayati). Extensive studies have shown that the impact of malnutrition makes the victim more susceptible to HIV virus as a result of plummeted body immunity (Al-Bayati). “The nutritional aspect of HIV/AIDS has been ignored for a long time. The attention was always focused on drugs.” said Kraisid Tontisirin of FAO’s Food and Nutrition division, “The message was always: ’take two tablets after meals’. But they forget about the meals.” he added. Additionally, environmental hazards such as insufficient water distribution, improper sanitation due to lack of important arterial rivers, and improper sewage treatment have boosted the widespread of AIDS.
An economic circumstance such as poverty also contributes to the fatal disease. Desperate people who need money, especially young men and women, may be involved in activities like crime, gambling, drugs and prostitution as their last resort. In fact, many women engage sexual relations to gain essential and basic financial assistance for their family. Hence, the prevalence of AIDS worsens. Moreover, prostitution had been a customary social behavior in Africa’s emerging urban middle class. The impact - two out of three are HIV positive, so prostitution evidently plays a key role in fuelling AIDS crisis in Africa.
Another factor worsening the disease is the low-literacy level of the citizens. Contraceptives are very uncommon as the people cannot afford them and some don’t even know they exist. Besides, many of the Africans, especially rural people, do not know about AIDS. They are often poor. Leaving with only their bodies to sell, they unwittingly either spread the disease or become infected with HIV when they serve their ‘customers’. In some place, infected men even claim having sex with a virgin cures AIDS, resulting girls as young as twelve to be prone to HIV exposures (Christensen). The lack of education is a major blight in attempts to spread messages and information about safe health practices and basic HIV awareness, causing the rapid spreading of AIDS; hence they need to be made as a common knowledge for the people.
The cost of medicines is another contributing factor. The medicines, known as antiretroviral agents, reduce the victim’s risk from acquiring HIV infection after exposure and also stop the transmission of HIV virus from pregnant mother to her child, condensing the spread of the disease. It is usually taken in three to four combinations each time for a long period depending on the seriousness. According to the AIDS/HIV Information Resources, “a twenty eight day course of antiretroviral agents for a single possible exposure to HIV costs an estimated $800 (range: $600-$1,000), depending on the agents used” (Considerations for…). The average annual income is $300, which implies, pathetically, that it takes miracles to rely on drugs as ultimate remedy.
Ultimately, government’s lack of action leads nowhere on regards to the AIDS issue. The government has argued and confounded many by opposing the use of AIDS drugs by claiming that they are too toxic and expensive hence, they are not available in public hospitals and clinics. Unethically, it was suspected to bee a motive to flee South African’s President Thabo Mbeki away from the case (Schoofs). John James, AIDS Treatments News reporter, regards the request for the wider use of nevirapine, a single tablet given to a mother to prevent mother-to-infant HIV transmission, was constantly denied over five years, arguing that they have only $207 million a year to spend on public-sector medicines in the country. Whereas the real concern is not on the cost because Indian drug's manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim has offered free, Indeed, they are afraid of economic retaliation due to overriding of product’s patent law that is different between each country.
AIDS profoundly impacts Africa by eroding the economic and social structures of communities in causing ill health and death, often to those who are most economically active, such as parents. Typically, AIDS affects livelihoods and families through loss of income when breadwinners can no longer work, or loss of labor for farming families. When this happens other household members are forced to spend time and resources caring for those infected. This burden usually falls on women and girls, and calls for increased spending on modern and traditional healthcare, travel and funerals. Savings, if any, are exhausted. Skills and experience stopped from one generation to the next, which is particularly a problem in farming communities. Nutrition deteriorates with less money for food and less labor for farming. Families suffer stress as many members become sick and die and experience alienation from their community because of the terror on AIDS.
As the costs and demands for treatment rise, those communities and countries affected by AIDS will go through further chain-effects which require more money, burdening the health sectors that are often already seriously under-resourced.
Children also suffer from the impact of the epidemic. Around thirteen million orphans already suffered the impact so far (Christensen). With older siblings and parents affected by AIDS, it is often left to younger children to support the family. They drop out of school to find work to support their siblings and often grandparents. The loss of labor for farming also increases the economic and nutritional burden on the AIDS orphans.
Inevitably, the AIDS epidemic continues to escalate in Africa. In truth, one in five babies is HIV positive and a staggering 43% of all pregnant women are infected. Subsequently, AIDS is wiping out vast numbers of men and women in their prime, leaving behind the very young and very old and bringing a downfall towards the economies of the nation eventually as many African nations depend almost entirely on the export of their farming in order to meet basic financial requirement. Thus, diminishing the labor forces and strangling the GDP of the country.
All in all, the devastation sourced from the unfortunate nature of the country itself, developing a direct and indirect growth to the AIDS pandemic. Consequently, several actions have been done in battling the problem. Personally, I would agree that solutions in educational aspects have been carried out, but, again, the economic circumstances emerge that AIDS is often not within the control of the potential victim - people may be educated but the unavoidable economic condition triggers the will. Therefore the AIDS peril in Africa is complex and ought to deserve extreme attention that hopefully will reach an end.

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