COLD STATISTICS

"AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa," notes the UN report "is the worst infectious disease catastrophe since the bubonic plague." In a White House publication on the same issue in 1999, a worried writer summarized the impact of AIDS on Africa in these chilling words: "Deaths due to AIDS in the region will soon surpass the 20 million people in Europe who died in the plague of 1347 and the more than 20 million people worldwide who died in the influenza epidemic of 1917. Over the next decade, AIDS will kill more people in sub-Saharan Africa than the total number of casualties lost in all wars of the 20th century combined." The report concluded by systematically breaking down what havoc AIDS would wreak in Africa if unchecked. "While sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only one-tenth of the global population, it currently carries the burden of more than 80% of AIDS death worldwide.

" In the past decade, 12 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have died of AIDS - one-quarter of them CHILDREN - and each day AIDS buries another 5,500 men women and children

" In 1988, AIDS was the largest killer and accounted for 1.8 million deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, nearly double the 1 million deaths from malaria and eight times the 209,000 deaths from tuberculosis.

" By 2005, the daily death toll will reach 13,000 people with nearly 5 million AIDS deaths in that year alone.

" In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 22 million adults and 1 million children are currently living with HIV. Everyday, 11000 additional people are infected - one every 8 seconds

Africa AIDS Watch has reacted swiftly in many instances by either arranging for direct medical supplies to affected people like we are currently doing with the St. Mary's hospital in the Kwa Zulu Province of South Africa. We also donated drugs and medical supplies to the Police Hospital in Lagos Nigeria and the Save Our Souls Children's Hospital also in Lagos Nigeria. We have recently opened offices in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Kenya.

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