posted 01-19-2008 02:02 AM            

quote:

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This year [Botswana] will receive about $300 million to fight AIDS—in addition to the hundreds of millions already granted by drug companies, private foundations and other donors. While in that sparsely populated country last month, I learned that much of its AIDS money remains unspent, as even its state-of-the-art H.I.V. clinics cannot absorb such a large influx of cash.

As the United States Agency for International Development's H.I.V. prevention adviser in southern Africa in 2005 and 2006, I visited villages in poor countries like Lesotho, where clinics could not afford to stock basic medicines but often maintained an inventory of expensive AIDS drugs and sophisticated monitoring equipment for their H.I.V. patients. H.I.V.-infected children are offered exemplary treatment, while children suffering from much simpler-to-treat diseases are left untreated, sometimes to die.

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posted 01-19-2008 08:21 AM            

The problems there are cultural and have to do with destructive cultural values, but it's politically incorrect to say that. We want to treat Africa like it's a guy who's been hit by a truck and needs a good Samaritan to pick him up and get him some help, but it's a bit more complicated than that.

The whole continent is a basket case because they desperately need to change their culture and change their values, but don't tell the liberal "helpers" that. They think only in terms of preserving the existing cultures over there, when the existing cultures are the problem.

How I came to think of it was that the liberals see Americans as people worthy of living in a modern industrialized culture and thought of Africans as animals to be relegated to a sort of vast nature preserve. It was considered evil for a foreign corporation to come open a factory there. When I pointed out that the locals would kill to work at such a factory and that the reason for that could only be that those who work at factories enjoy a better standard of living than if they had remained subsistence farmers, I was always told that this is "exploitation" and that they were really better off being subsistence farmers but didn't know it. It was the nature preserve mentality. The liberals thought of the Africans like animals in a zoo: Oh look at the cute subsistence farmers living in their natural habitat--don't let them escape into the industrialized world.

posted 01-19-2008 09:47 AM            

The SA HIV program is run by the military, not the goobernmint, so it has other problems, but it is doing something, whereas other african aid is basically shoveling money down a pit.

Appeals to authority are not a valid argument, I understand. However, I am 1 degree separated from the people that do the interaction with the african HIV programs.

posted 01-19-2008 09:54 PM            

The SA military has MANY problems, but the people in it that are running the HIV program aren't whack jobs. They may have other inefficiency issues, but they do seem to be trying to get something done, in a smart way.

posted 01-23-2008 07:07 PM            

see also: http://www.fumento.com