30/05/2011

Editorial
Prevention is not enough in the fight against AIDS in Africa

Prof.ssa Maria Cristina Marazzi
Comunity of Sant’Egidio - LUMSA University

By the end of the 1990s the AIDS epidemic in Africa was outlined as a real humanitarian catastrophe :an impressive number of infected subjects, a high rate of mortality mainly in the fertile age and an increasing population of little orphans.
In those years big international agencies and most of the non-government organizations have applied, in the fight against AIDS in Africa, only a prevention model ,based on sanitary education campaigns: it has been mainly persisted on the correct use of condoms, as an essential aid and almost always the only one in the fight against AIDS.
The lacking of effectiveness of this exclusively preventive approach has not been only under the experts’ eyes but also under the world’s public opinion.
The current 22mln of infected in Africa are ,unfortunately, a proof.
The failure is due to the lack of education towards the respect for the human being and the absence of an effective therapy which are inseparable from a real prevention.
Indeed, the Hiv/AIDS in developed countries started decreasing in 1996,when an effective therapy was introduced: the Haart-( Highly active anti-retroviral therapy).
Why should it have been different in Africa? Obviously there were not scientific reasons but merely misinterpreted economic ones.
The subject infected hardly undergoes a test, because of the social stigma linked to seropositive , which, with no treatment ,corresponds to an inevitable death sentence.
Besides, following the reductively preventive approach ,among populations where the infection affects one person out of five, other relevant ways of transmission are disregarded :from mother to child ,from poor sanitary practice (iatrogenic) or connected to traditional medicine.
To S.Egidio’s Community, which has a huge number of African members ,the containment of the infection has immediately appeared being not adequate to save the millions of infected Africans’ lives left hopelessly...