Saturday, April 28, 2007
My Reflection:
The abstract of the article mainly talks about the trends in the global spread of HIVs, some causes of the trend, international organizations that are set up to prevent and care for the infected people and their effectiveness. It brings out the fact that despite there are increasing funds for prevention and treatment of HIVs, it continues to intensify in most regions. The increasingly mobile global migration can be blamed as one of the reasons for the spread of HIVs. Moreover, the health consequence of the globalization is more likely to affect poor women than poor men. In the article, it is also argued that even though there are increasing amount of money being spent to prevent and treat, the shortfalls in both money and number of people they reach out is limited only to a small number of people.
Firstly, I agree that HIVs is a kind of global diseases which post challenge in most countries around the world. HIV infection rates and prevalence continue to increase world wide. It is expanding and intensifying globally. For example, as the article mentioned, in sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, account for approximately 79% of new infections between 1998 and 2003. In addition, there is estimation that by the year 2015, there will be an around 16 million children orphaned by HIVs in Africa alone. This kind of global diseases can be said to be speed up by globalization to some extent. Globalization is defined as: “the drive towards an economic system dominated by supranational trade and banking institutions that are not accountable to democratic processes or national government” (From www.globalisationguide.org/01.html) It can be shown through increasing economic, social, and technological exchange between countries around the world. As people are moving across the borders in search of new economic and education opportunities, or in search of lives free from political conflict and violence, they may bring together their viruses that causes HIVs, and often, they meet the virus at their destinations. Hence in another words, increasing globalization makes spread of HIVs easier.
However, we have to take into account that the globalization only speed up the spread of HIVs but not causes them. It also can not explain the fact that there are relatively more HIV infections in poor regions. Instead, other factors such as poverty, disease, famine, political and economic instability and weak health infrastructure cause a country to be more vulnerable to HIV viruses. The virus will cross boarder with ease and be particularly comfortable in regions with above conditions. This is because, those regions have less control over the diseases as they have to care for their political, economical problems first. Moreover, they do not have the ability to raise money and enforce policies to control the situation of HIVs. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa where the greatest numbers of people infected with HIVs exist, the governments pay little attentions to the spread of HIVs. The money they spent on HIVs is much less than that spent by European countries where HIVs infections are not as serious as their own countries.
On the other hand, even though globalization speeds up the spread of HIVs, it also gives solutions to the global health challenge. Numerous international funds have been set up in recent times to address HIVs infections. They usually send people out to talk and teach locals, set up more efficient heath institutions, infrastructures, and conduct studies on recent HIVs infection trends. For example, there are 99 projects in 56 countries funded by the World Bank to both prevent the spread and take care of those infected. Moreover, there are approximately US$330 million available for HIV/AIDS initiatives worldwide in1996, a figure which had risen to US$4.7 billion by 2003. There is also progress made. As in Africa, there is increasing number of people to use contraceptives methods to prevent spread of HIVs and those infected people are living longer than they have ever done. Treatment for HIV has also increased by 8 times. Despite all those progresses, those international organizations can not be said effective to a large extent. Most importantly, the numbers of people treated by them are limited. For example, the project financed by World Bank only reaches out to a million people which make up 23% of the infected. In addition, the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS reach less than 10% of pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission, and no more than 26% of sex workers have any access to HIV prevention support. So although those programme help, it does not help most of the people.
Hence, in conclusion, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has highlighted the global nature of human health. Even though, globalization brings negative impact on speeding up the spread of dideases, it has also given rise to a trend toward finding solutions to global health challenges, like HIVs. Those global funds and international organizations may not be efficient enough, but they are making progress.
Sign off,
Li shihan
Environmental and Health Expert
Future Perfect; Environment and Health Expert
4:24 AM
