Lamin Sabally- Minneapolis, Minnesota
Irrefutable Genesis of HIV/AIDS
Typically, but rather not surprising, a bulk of Western media assessment of HIV/AIDS has portrayed Sub-Saharan Africa as an area chronically synonymous with the AIDS pandemic. Whether this characterization is true in its entirety or is grossly exaggerated, what has become irrefutably evident is the credible statistics indicating that the widespread nature of the pandemic is decimating populations, deteriorating economies, deepening poverty, and destabilizing social values in Africa as a whole with Sub-Saharan African forming what can be described as the epicenter of the killer virus. Because of this unfortunate picture of the true HIV/AIDS situation, some media reports have suggested speculatively and controversially for lack of convincing evidence that the pandemic, which has become an international menace, has emanated from Africa. The media reports have come under heavy flak from different sources in Africa as being cripplingly biased against a continent whose image has been seriously damaged, tarnished and bespattered in the western media.
Over time, there has been expanded and deeper investigation of the genesis of the pandemic and based on some hidden concrete findings, it looks like there is no doubt that HIV virus emanated from Africa. The research findings given in a joint Canadian, Belgian and France documentary title “the origins of Aids”, the culprits as not Africans, but Westerners came to Africa to develop and test polio immunization drug. Conducted by German scientist, according to the 2004 National Film Boards documentary, over a million African were advertently infected with the trail dug that carried the HIV virus that later resulted in the genesis and spread of the virus killing many of those innocent Africans infected with the killer virus. The West and the scientific community have been consistently mum over the calamitous case and have always persistently eschewed public consumption or discussion for fear of causing irreversible embarrassment and the blame for setting Africa behind after colonization.
Some mammoth challenges in the fight against HIV/AIDS
HIV/AIDS, as indicated, is incontrovertibly, a global problem confronting world’s governments and agencies. Due to the gargantuan loss of lives attributed to the epidemic, frantic national and international efforts have been persistently put in place with huge amount of resources dedicated to finding a possible cure and the fight against its related- deaths. However, accumulating research findings suggested that the demographic crisis created by HIV/AIDS virus will continue for some many decades to come in Africa, no matter what, well after the pandemic comes under control. For instance, a whole generation of people has been verifiable wiped out and it has chronically devastated the economies of Africa especially sub-Saharan region irreparably. Life expectancy in some countries in that part of Africa seen as the epicenter of the virus has gone back 20 years. Similarly, despite the research on the disease, it has been determined that the money spend on developed countries is mainly the brand in the developed countries. The virus takes many forms and varies from one region to another and the colossal amount of money spent on the research has evidently excluded the variant in Africa. A pile of research findings concluded that the variant of virus in West Africa is different from the one in East Africa. Hopefully, in the long run, the Western World may apply the research findings on their variant to the African variant or assist the cash-strapped Sub-Saharan countries with the required money, personnel and laboratory equipment to conduct their own researches. The Kenya education and intervention effort simply epitomizes such national crusade. So, any study dedicated to finding out gains registered by individual governments or agencies in the war against HIV/AIDS such as the one in Kenya, where the intervention and education programs have claimed to have significantly raised awareness that equally heralded reduction in infection rate is worth studying. Most importantly, making recommendations for the replication of the Kenyan success story in other HIV/AIDS – battered Sub-Saharan countries provides an added impetus to the significance of the study of HIV/AIDS.
Brief Professional Recommendations
African political leadership must also address the predisposing factors and situational conditions of HIV/AIDS. The long term solution to dealing with the epidemic should be addressed right from the time it started by looking at the social structural factors, situations and processes that predispose young people, men or women to be in a risk situation or make certain choices and behave in certain ways. For example, if women, men or young people behave in a certain way for instance, the sex debutante of young people, the political leadership have to examine what are the conditions in the culture that are pushing them in this direction, i.e., to make such choices instead of just focusing on the choice made. Is such a situation not an indication of a weakening of social and cultural controls in societal norms and values? Could it be that the culture has become more sexualized such as through the media and therefore tantalizing to the young? Could it be that young girls are looking for opportunities to generate money when their parents died and they are orphans or they want to buy something expensive in order to dress well and be attractive to men? In some parts of Africa, girls are willing to offer sex just for candy, indicating social deprivation. There are also factors such as rural-urban migration and migrant labor from one region to the other e.g., from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique etc. to South African mines. When the migrants go there, they leave their spouses at home and then they stay for eleven months in the mines where a prostitution business has developed. Then they return home in December for a month’s holidays to sleep with their spouses. What are the causes of rural-urban migration or regional labor migration? These are all situations rooted in global economic processes. Even climate change has sometimes destroyed the basis for agriculture and animal husbandry resulting in people being forced to leave the land to look for opportunities to make money for survival in cities. In parts of Kenya, some rural women leave their homes to go to the city and engage in prostitution in order to raise some cash for the family. By just focusing on sex education, and providing condoms, the leadership of African countries has proven to be incapable of looking deeply at the root course of the problem and the deeper ramifications. Solutions should be at both short term and long term dimensions.
It was not surprising to find out that Kenya is a home to a sea of Non-Governmental Organizations numbering over five thousand. However, some research findings critically doubted their contributions to the fight against HIV/AIDS. It appears there is lack of leadership to realign these NGOs with their vision and mission especially those involved in health promotion at the community levels. Literature suggests that many of them mushroomed in Africa because of the perceived failure of the post-colonial states to govern effectively without corruption. In attrition, many of the NGOs have been sharply criticized for not doing a great job, but have been seen as a conduit for some African elites to make money. This is particularly the case of Kenya, where corruption is endemic. Moreover, in many cases, some faith-based organizations that were hugely funded to do the work on AIDS lack the technical understanding of the situation or experience, but were allegedly chosen for the implementation of the PEPFAR because of their connection with the Bush Administration that pumped in huge amount of money in Africa under the global highly-publicized program for fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa.
There is the need to combine religious and scientific approaches, so that a leader will not just embrace the advice or counsel of religious people, while not using social scientific literature or methods to interrogate the religious counsel. Generally, people who believe something on religious grounds often do not care about empirical evidence generated by social scientific research. Religious beliefs are presumably fixed while scientific ideas change. The Catholic Church as literature discovered has for a long time remained opposed to the use of condoms, on religious grounds, even though empirical evidence suggests they make a difference in controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS. The issue raise leadership question on how to integrate scientific and religious worldviews in public administration. For instance, social research indicates as in the case of Kenya that not all people can abstain, so planning for where abstinence failed becomes a realistic leadership issue.
Changing the patriarchal formation of most African cultures where women continue are not considered to have equal standing like men is necessary in containing the epidemic. Literature suggested that Women are at the receiving end. This situation needs to change across Africa with policies and programs for gender equity. The ABC news nightline 2000 documentary named “AIDS in Africa” tacitly substantiated literature findings that African patriarchal culture deny women to refuse sex. This sexual culture incubated right at family level must change by making men’s attitudes about women to change. Even if a woman say no to sex, it is considered a joke, and women are taught to be dependent on men in almost all African cultures .Programs of gender equity and women empowerment policies again must be enforced with astute political commitment to surmount the imbalance sexual and reproductive rights that biasedly favored men.
These are a few excerpts from my Master’s Degree Thesis titled “HIV/AIDS Education and Intervention in Kenya”. The study examined the leadership and collaborative components of the enormous national crusade in the fight against the catastrophically killer disease.