World AIDS Day

AIDS has so far killed around twenty-five million people which makes the pandemic deadly than World War I. The disease came out of Africa and spread into the United States via Haiti. Meanwhile, the globalized world and underworld allowed the plague to spread across the globe.

Besides geopolitical concerns about instability one must be primarily worried about the sheer lose of life. Catholicgauze marks those who have died and suffered directly and indirectly due to AIDS.

Global Health Facts has a series of maps displaying AIDS data via country. Southern Africa is being hit hard.

In the United States AIDS is outrageously high in Washington D.C. with 1 in 50 having AIDS and 1 in 20 having HIV (that is five percent!). The disease in prominent in the big cities. The CDC has a map of AIDS in the United States.

India is facing a crisis in the southern rural areas which has now spread to some big cities. The disease primarily affects the super poor and follows them around from rural misery to urban misery.

Europe has declining death rate but AIDS is still spreading. Once only located in the West, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought down the Iron Curtain and AIDS quickly spread in part due to the depression Russia was going through (drugs seemed popular when all else failed). A map shows the damage.

I wish to thank Nat the Dem for reminding me about World AIDS Day.