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Need foreign funds? Just inflate your HIV-positive figures!
In the US, official statistics show that the number of HIV-positive persons has not increased from 1 million since testing began and experts say the figure has now come down to between 6-8,00,000. In UK also the official estimate of 23,000 HIV-positive cases nationwide is about one-half or a third of earlier estimates. In Russia 30,000 were earlier estimated to be HIV-positive, but later only 66 were found to be so!
But in Africa the "estimated" HIV-positive total has risen to 20 million - seemingly in direct proportion to the increasing international donor activity in he HIV/AIDS sector with the entire action shifting from the West to Africa. Even as the reported AIDS cases in Africa number only 129,000 (half the US figure), many damaging claims about AIDS continue to be made by a multitude of western research projects and by governmental and non-governmental organisations. Amongst the most publicised of these were stories relating to whole villages identified as "dying from AIDS" in Kagera district of northern Tanzania and to hordes of "AIDS orphans". Less publicised were the facts that two years later in the 'most-affected' villages only 5 to 13 per cent of the people tested HIV-positive or that the "orphans" were children left with grandparents in polygamous cultures and had nothing to do with AIDS! But the damage has already been done - and is only now being fathomed.
The New African magazine, which circulates across the continent, says "alarmist and exaggerated" forecasts made by western experts, supported by the WHO, have done immeasurable harm to African confidence and the way Africans are seen abroad and has called for an international inquiry to establish the truth about AIDS.
Today Africans with symptoms of almost 20 old and established diseases that have come to be identified with HIV are refusing to seek medical help for the diseases because they fear they will be labelled AIDS patients! At the same time, as noted by the minister of health and child welfare in Zimbabwe, the WHO and the 'AIDS industry' had fostered a damaging epidemic of 'HIV-itis' in Africa, which is distracting money, attention and personnel from known problems like malaria, TB, STDs and safe motherhood. Likewise in Uganda in 1992, the total budget for malaria treatment and control was less than $ 57,000, yet foreign funding for AIDS was over $ 6 million. Under the circumstances, Africa is witnessing a resurgence of old and curable diseases like malaria and TB, which are beginning to assume the proportions of a public health hazard - a clear signal of the disruption of health care systems by HIV interventions. Further, as people die on the streets - not from HIV/AIDS, but from curable diseases - governments are unable to respond, as they are completely dependent on and controlled by donors who came in with funds for controlling opportunistic diseases but drew the health system into the HIV prevention programme.
Every major funding agency seems to be in Africa working in AIDS prevention - from the World Bank, the churches, the Red Cross, the UNDP, African Medical Research Foundation_ About 17 organisations in Kagera alone are doing something for AIDS. The numerous AIDS agencies that have flourished in much of Central Africa have also brought with them "development", turning small neglected towns into towns full of Land Rovers and Toyotas. The day the epidemic goes away, a lot of "development" is going to go away too! Many who have seen the ground realities say it is easy to 'do good' in Africa as it is so disorganised that the one who is doing good is also the one reporting the good he is doing! So Africa is a good market and experimental ground for many organisations, a perfect field for fake charity which benefits the benefactors.
Meanwhile, the immense international funds available for HIV and AIDS work remain an incentive for cooking up exaggerated statistics. Indeed, many of the horror stories in Africa came into existence because of the funds they brought in. Political factors have also played a part in the scramble for funds. For instance, when Kenya lost $300 m in desperately-needed foreign currency in 1991, due to an attempt by the industrialised world to force political and economic reforms, the health minister made a crisis announcement showing AIDS figures spiralling out of control and horror stories of AIDS deaths. This was internationally recognised as an attempt to win back donor sympathy and funds. Many African countries are now facing mounting debts. There are cases where the annual interest payment on borrowings for HIV prevention alone add up to more than twice the total annual health budget of the country!
Thus in Africa the HIV
prevention programme, driven by the AIDS industry through international
donors, has made for a medical crisis and social disarray of tragic proportions
in just about a decade.
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