Global war on AIDS depends on honesty

There was a major development Monday in the worldwide effort to stop the spread of AIDS, an incurable disease that has claimed millions of lives: The Chinese government shed its traditional veil of secrecy and publicly acknowledged that at least 840,000 Chinese are HIV-positive and that 10 million more might become infected by 2010 without proper prevention.
Such honesty from Beijing is noteworthy not only because it's rare, but because it stands in stark contract to the posture of other governments in nations being ravaged by AIDS. The refusal of many Third World leaders to admit that they can no longer control the pandemic is a major barrier to a global assault on the disease.
That is why activists and health workers were out in force Monday to mark World AIDS Day. They walked, rallied and conducted teaching sessions on AIDS prevention. In China, Premier Wen Jiabao visited the AIDS ward at a Beijing hospital and Chinese health workers were dispatched to construction sites and schools.
But while the display of public support for openness is a good thing, only governments have the ability to launch aggressive campaigns in their countries to provide life-extending antiretroviral drugs to the millions of people infected by the virus that causes AIDS and to teach safe sex.
And lest anyone think that the extent of this pandemic is being exaggerated, consider the latest report from the United Nations: This year, more people than ever died or were infected by HIV/AIDS -- 3 million deaths and another 5 million cases of infection.
Worldwide, between 34 million and 46 million people are believed to have the virus.
Troubling predictions
In India, where the government has been reluctant to publicly talk about the 4 million who have been infected, the number of HIV-positive people could jump to between 20 million and 25 million, according to predictions in a recent U.S. government report. The Indian government has rejected that estimate.
It is such refusal to face the bitter truth that has contributed to the ever-growing problem.
Take South Africa, where the government had previously questioned the existence of the disease. Today, that country has the highest number of AIDS-infected residents, 5.3 million. It is fortunate that former President Nelson Mandela is willing to stand up and talk about what needs to be done to reverse the trend.
Organizers of World AIDS Day have called on governments to declare a world AIDS emergency. It's a declaration that's timely and necessary. The United Nations must become more aggressive in not only stopping the spread of the disease, but in making available the life-prolonging drugs to people in the Third World.
President Bush's commitment of $15 billion over the next five years to fights AIDS, TB and malaria in Africa and the Caribbean is an important step because it shows that the world's lone superpower will not sit idly by while whole populations are destroyed. Other developed nations should follow suit -- if not for humanitarian reasons, then for their own selfish economic interests. Of nearly 8,000 businesses in 103 countries surveyed for a World Economic Forum's Global Health Initiative report, 47 percent felt that HIV will have some impact on their businesses.