26 June 2000
(Disease harming economic growth in many nations) (770) By Jim Fisher-Thompson Washington File Correspondent United Nations -- The scourge of HIV/AIDS threatens all parts of the world, but sub-Saharan Africa is especially vulnerable because of a population already weakened by other infectious diseases and ill-served by national health infrastructures strained from a shortage of resources. That was the message David Gordon, an economist and global affairs analyst, imparted at a June 17 luncheon at the United Nations sponsored by the HDI institute, a non-governmental organization that specializes in public/private sector solutions to the world's problems. Gordon, a former congressional staff member who is now a U.S. national intelligence officer for economic and global issues, helped work on a "National Intelligence Estimate" of global infectious diseases and their impact on the United States that was recently sent to President Clinton and other top government officials. According to the official, this study found that "sub-Saharan Africa is by far the region most vulnerable to infectious diseases [like tuberculosis and malaria] in general, and accounts for one-half of infectious disease deaths globally, despite comprising only about 10 percent of the world's population." HIV/AIDS has had a larger impact on the continent than in any other part of the world, Gordon added, noting that "roughly 80 percent of deaths from HIV/AIDS have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa." Gordon pointed out that the U.N. Security Council, led by U.S. Permanent Representative Richard Holbrooke, had recently declared HIV/AIDS "the worst infectious disease catastrophe since the Bubonic Plague." Today, roughly 24 million Africans south of the Sahara desert are infected with HIV/AIDS, Gordon said, and in seven countries in southern Africa about 20 percent of the adult population is infected. Because of the disease, life expectancy is being reduced by 20 years in countries like Botswana and Zambia, he added, and between 35 and 40 million children could be orphaned by the disease. AIDS is not just a health issue, Gordon told his audience, but constitutes "an extraordinary challenge" to economic development for African nations. "The precise economic impact of AIDS is not easy to estimate," Gordon said, but "recent work by the World Bank, USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and others suggests that once a country's infection rate expands beyond 5 percent there is a powerful macroeconomic impact that kicks in, and for the most heavily affected countries, can take as much as one, perhaps even one and a half percent off annual GDP." In one year "that is not a large impact," Gordon added. But "if you play that out over 10 or 15 years, the impact becomes very, very large." Because of the devastating social impact AIDS is having on African populations, African governments are having to face "the cruelest kinds of budgetary tradeoffs," he said. The disease has had an especially hard effect on "the professional class -- a class crucial to the resurrection of civil society, economic growth, and maintenance of social stability," Gordon stressed. AIDS has also taken a toll on investment in Africa, the economist said. He recalled that after addressing the U.S.-South African Business Council in March about a trip to South Africa, he "wasn't asked a single question about the economic climate in South Africa. What every one of these representatives of U.S. firms wanted to talk about was HIV/AIDS -- what it will mean for them and how the government is responding to it. I was quite taken aback by that." Gordon stressed that from a security standpoint, "AIDS flourishes in an atmosphere of instability, uncertainty, and war, making democratic and economic transitions more challenging and difficult." Pointing to HIV/AIDS success stories in Senegal and Uganda, he said, "I'm not a pessimist" about Africa's future, and he explained that "history and experience show that a disease like AIDS can be stopped." In combating the killer, the economist said, three main lessons have been learned to date: -- one, that national leadership is indispensable to curbing the disease's spread. Uganda's success at dropping AIDS prevalence rates by two-thirds, he said, is a direct result of "tremendous and bold leadership" by the government of President Yoweri Museveni; -- two, that the international community has a crucial role to play by providing needed resources, including affordable drugs; and -- three, that the "destigmatization" of the disease is a crucial component in treating it, in understanding how it is transmitted, and in working to change behavior that contributes to its spread. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)