There have been a number of stories in recent days about the failure of the UN to raise the $10 billion it wants for its AIDS fund. Salon.Com’s Daryl Lindsey recently conducted an interview with public health expert Carole Collins which does a pretty good job of outlining why the AIDS fund will have very little effect on the pandemic even if it comes close to the $10 billion. As Bill Clinton might have put it, It’s the poverty, stupid.
Unfortunately, Carole Collins can’t quite see the forest for the trees and falls back on the old “we need more foreign aid” saw. That strategy will work only if the aid can be routed around the corrupt regimes that have caused the poverty in the first place. If you want to do something about AIDS in Zimbabwe, for example, the last thing you want to do is allow Robert Mugabe anywhere near the money (Mugabe’s taken Zimbabwe from a shining example of what is possible on the African continent down to the depths of economic disaster).
In fact, when you look at the countries that have the highest incidence of AIDS, the tend to be those nations in Africa that are the most non-democratic. Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Namibia, Malawi (Botswana and South Africa break the rule here, but the legacy of apartheid has made it extremely difficult for those countries to respond to the AIDS crisis).