Causes for the AIDS Crisis in Africa

Marwa Alethafa
Al Qadisiyah, Iraq

According to The United Nations, seventy percent of people in the sub Saharan countries of Africa have Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). These are mostly poor, developing countries in Africa. The United Nations also notes that more than one million adults and children die every year from HIV/AIDS in Africa alone. In fact, 91% of the world’s HIV-positive children live in Africa. Propagation of the HIV in sub-Saharan Africa is the result of weak economy, unsafe sexual practices, and lack of health awareness.

One of most important factors leading to the prevalence of HIV in these countries is the economy. Sub-Saharan African Countries have very weak economies. Most of these countries are agricultural countries, but subsistence agriculture has been affected by many factors such as civil wars in a large number of these countries, lower technological tools, poor farm inputs and desert encroachment (Hellandendu, 2012). There is therefore a substantial migration of rural people who are able to work to urban areas looking for a job among the few available jobs.

According to Hellandendu, 2012, a large number of these immigrants are men who get their sexual needs through commercial or other forms of promiscuous sexual outlets. On the other hand, the females are searching for opportunities to make clients of the sex market and migrate to cities with the main goal of making money through full time or clandestine commercial sex work (Chela and Mensah, 1995). Poverty in these countries makes every one of people looking for a way to provide necessities of life including the satisfaction of sexual desires. Furthermore, millions of children have cut off tie with their families because the parents and guardians failed to provide the means of sustenance for them. This forces these children to make their living on streets by doing bad jobs like begging, stealing or engaging in commercial sex activities.

The second problem is that many people do not have safe sexual practices. In many developing South Africa countries, people need to prove that they have sexual prowess where male is required to demonstrate virility by having many sex partners. In some Sub-Saharan African countries, it is a requirement as a part of ritual practices that non-married partners do sexual intercourse between them.

These practices are not exclusive for sexually mature people. Hellandendu, 2012 stated that in Mbale District of Uganda, boys are circumcised as part of passage de rite at the adolescent stage and then it is necessary for them to have sexual intercourse with eligible female partners of comparable ages to them in order to have the required number of partners for successful completion of the ritual. These unsafe practices among different ages led to roughly 23.8 million infected persons in all of Africa (The United Nations, 2012).

The final problem is the lack of health awareness among people who are living in these countries. Most people who infected with HIV are not convinced that they have the virus and they continue living with this secret for the rest of their life. Because this disease has a long incubation period, people who are close to those infected and their families are susceptible to transmission of the virus. This makes the average life-expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is 54.4 years of age; in some countries in Africa, it’s below 49 (World Health Organization, 2014). In addition, poor education and the lack of it in some cities in these countries led to the lack of

health awareness among young people. This makes the most of infected People hide their disease for fear of rejection of their community for them. Instead, people should put the issue in front the community to raise awareness of health by transferring experiences and advices among their society.

Some people argue that the governments in these countries are not required to provide the expensive treatment for people who are going to die anyway. So, they are wondering why these governments spend a lot of money on the rampant disease with no hope. However, without providing treatment for these people may affect their life by losing hope to still a life and they will be waiting to die. By this way, the government could kill them before HIV does.

In conclusion, there are many reasons of the spread of HIV and at different levels: social, economic and cultural. The economy and the lack of awareness of health and cultural are the most effective reasons that contributed in the spread of the virus. In order to eliminate these causes, the sub Saharan countries of Africa need to join all international, local, family and personal efforts. There are presently drugs that delay the development of HIV into full-blown AIDS in the developing countries. However, these drugs are still very expensive and most HIV patients in developing countries and Sub-Saharan African in particular cannot take these drugs. I believe that providing these drugs for every one could reduce the risk of spread this danger virus.

References

1) Chela, C. and Mesch, M.(1995). Policy and practice: change at the national level require great political commitment and resources. AIDS ACTION, 29, p 3.

2) Hellandendu, J., (2012). Contributory factors to the spread of HIV/aids and it impacts in sub-

Saharan African countries. European Scientific Journal, 8(14), 1857 – 7881.

3) The United Nations. "World AIDS Day 2012." UN AIDS.World Health Organization. "Use of antiretrovirals for treatment and prevention of HIV infection." WHO. Accessed April 15, 2014.http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/treatment/en/>.