May 17, 2011

World HIV Ranking

Check out this link from the CIA World Fact Book for a ranking of countries according to HIV prevalence among adults. The first twenty-two countries are in Africa. It is hard for me to process that there is a country--Swaziland--where more than one in four adults has HIV. Of course, the whole country only has 1,300,000 or so people, which is about the size of San Diego. Still, imagine driving down the 805 knowing that one out of every four adults you see has HIV.

I wonder if Swaziland citizens know about their epidemic? Even more disturbing to me is the last section of Swaziland's entry in the CIA World Fact book which states that Swaziland is a major source, destination, and transit point for human trafficking. Men are trafficked for labor and women are trafficked for sex, especially into South Africa and Mozambique. Great, South Africa already has the largest population of people infected by HIV, nearly six million by some estimates! Mozambique is a country where the average life expectancy is 52 years.

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