In the 26th year of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the profit system has only exacerbated the epidemic. An estimated 33 million people currently are infected with HIV—2.5 million are children born to infected mothers.
The economic crisis that accompanies the disease is equally devastating, particularly in the developing world. About half the people who are HIV positive become infected by age 25 and die by age 35 from AIDS-related complications. This has the effect of decimating large sections of the poorest countries’ workforces. For example, one-fourth of Botswana’s population is HIV infected.
Around 95 percent of the people with HIV/AIDS live in economically underdeveloped countries. Two-thirds of those affected live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The victims of HIV/AIDS are overwhelmingly poor and oppressed—the have-nots of the world.
In industrialized countries like the United States, Britain and France, it is estimated that 25 to 33 percent of those infected with HIV are unaware of their status.
Bigotry and stigma, coupled with the lack of comprehensive testing initiatives, are barriers to treating people in earlier stages of infection. In these countries, racism, sexism and homophobia are promoted by the imperialist governments and media.
The capitalist profit system is the main obstacle to HIV/AIDS research funding that could find a cure for those infected, as well as prevent further infections.
Only five percent of infected people have access to drugs that could significantly extend their lives. Meanwhile, giant pharmaceutical companies continue to reap more than $100 million in profits a day from the sale of drugs to those who can afford it.
The World Health Organization reported that the primary factor contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide is lack of access to health care. The WHO estimated that 40 percent of HIV-positive children were infected through breast milk. It also noted that these mothers lack access to alternative food and health care for their newborns.
Opposition to funding
Recently revised U.N. estimates of the extent of the AIDS epidemic are being used by economic interests opposed to adequate global funding of the fight AIDS.
Misleading accounts have recently appeared in the media, intended to sway public opinion against the already insufficient funding that exists. These stories claim that estimates have been exaggerated and unintentionally misrepresented by the United Nations, the World Health Organization and others to help build the case for increased funding.
These reactionary attacks on the struggle to increase funding are not new. Since the beginning of the crisis, major monopolies and imperialist powers, governments and other interests have sought ways to confuse the public, undermine research and care, and to dodge their responsibilities to fund a serious global struggle against AIDS.
The new numbers show that 33 million people are infected. The previous figure given was 40 million.
While the new estimates are slightly lower, they nevertheless dramatize how far-reaching the epidemic has become and how insufficient the funding is for current efforts to fight the epidemic. Over 2.1 million people died from AIDS in 2006.
Because of the rampant rate of infection and lack of public health in many poor and underdeveloped countries, it is obviously hard to arrive at specific numbers, but even those who seek to undermine funding for the crisis acknowledge the catastrophic dimensions of the AIDS epidemic.
At the 2005 AIDS summit in Scotland, leaders in the fight against AIDS estimated that funding for treatment would have to reach $42 billion by the year 2010 to meet the demands. If the current funding rate continues ($10 billion in 2007), funding by 2010 will only reach $15 billion.
Lack of funding hits oppressed countries the hardest, but it is also an issue in the United States. Ryan White funding—an entitlement program to provide medical treatment and care for people with HIV and AIDS in the United States that was won out of the struggles of the AIDS movement in the late 1980s—has decreased in recent years.
Meanwhile, the numbers of people infected has increased. It remains extremely disproportionate among the African American and Latino communities and continues to significantly impact gay and bisexual men.
For people who live in states and areas of the United States that do not receive Ryan White or other adequate funding there are long waiting lists for case management and treatment.
The U.S. Congress, which directs hundreds of billions of dollars each year toward imperialist wars of destruction in the Middle East, has done nothing to increase funding for the Ryan White Act in the face of the growing crisis.
December 1, World AIDS Day points to need to do away with the capitalist system in order to adequately address the suffering of tens of millions around the world. A centralized, globally coordinated program aimed at providing the available treatments, education and care to all who are infected is urgently required to stop the epidemic. Only such coordinated action with massive funding can a vaccine and cure be achieved.
But for this to happen, private pharmaceutical companies and the for-profit healthcare system need to be abolished. Only then can all the people affected by HIV and AIDS around the world receive the medications they need and deserve.
