Canadian Polemic

It's likely, that in the crush of news and punditry about the Canadian election and President George W Bush's woes over Iraq, the fact that tomorrow, 1 December, is World AIDS Day 2005 will be forgotten. Each minute that is spent quarreling over the candidacy of Michael Ignatieff or which party leader loves Canada more sees 5 people die of AIDS. That means that the pandemic is claiming over 8 000 lives each day. 40.3 million people are currently living with HIV and AIDS. Nearly 65% of those, or 25.8 million, live in Sub-Saharan Africa. To date, 23.1 million people have died of AIDS - and the numbers keep growing.

The pandemic continues to spin out of control, a consequence largely of lacklustre commitment from the West to deal once and for all with the spread of the disease. Anyone who hasn't already must read Stephen Lewis' recent Massey Lectures, published as Race Against Time, and also found over on the sidebar. Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN and Ontario NDP Leader, is currently the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. He works tirelessly to raise awareness about the crisis, but with little success - no wonder he's starting to feel a bit burned out.

So tomorrow, on World AIDS Day, think for a moment about some of the statistics I mentioned above. Our partisan jabs about gaffes and electoral bravado seem rather pointless when we look at the larger picture. The pandemic is something that can be beaten - all we need is the collective will. We've got the anti-retroviral drugs to treat AIDS patients, we've got the funds. But little actually happens, and more people die. If we fail to act, the daily death rate of 8 000 people dying of AIDS will only increase and increase and increase. As human beings, how can we stand by and let such a travesty, such an absolutely execrable tragedy continue to happen? Stephen Lewis captures, perhaps, the appropriate sentiments. "The criminal negligence on the part of the Western world has lasted for so long that we’ll never be able to compensate for the deaths that have occurred," he notes. "But you have to continue fighting, and one day, unexpectedly, you break through. That’s what I’m waiting for."