Tom Coburn: “5 years ago, Africa was in crisis and in despair. HIV/AIDS was decimating whole communities. Some countries, such as…”

“5 years ago, Africa was in crisis and in despair. HIV/AIDS was decimating whole communities. Some countries, such as Botswana, were literally on a path to extinction, with rates of HIV infection among pregnant women in some locations reaching as high as 40 and even 50 percent. In South Africa, while a third of pregnant woman were infected with the virus, the country's political leaders were actually denying that AIDS was caused by HIV infection, an ominous sign that little help was on the way for the over 4 million South Africans--over 10 percent of the population--dying of AIDS. In 2003, if a woman in sub-Saharan Africa was infected with HIV, the familiar story was all too oft-repeated. She would very likely watch her husband die first, and then her youngest children would also become infected either at birth or through breastfeeding, as she languished under her own death sentence. Within a short time, her children would be orphans, left to fend for themselves in the streets and slums of Nairobi, or Soweto, often getting sick with their own HIV infections and dying alone, without food or shelter or medicine. The sheer numbers at the time were staggering. The disease affected well over 20 million people in sub-Saharan Africa by the year 2000, roughly equivalent to the total number of American children under 6 years old. The problem seemed overwhelming, indeed hopeless. What was the world doing to stop the carnage?”