The Challenge of AIDS in Africa

On April 25 former U.S. Congressman Ronald Dellums came to the City College campus to deliver its 18th Presidential Lecture. His subject was “U.S. Foreign Policy on HIV/AIDS in Africa." Among his remarks were these:

“The AIDS virus is an equal-opportunity destroyer. It is not racist, it is not classist, it is not sexist, it is not homophobic, and it has no citizenship… This is a multi-level, highly complex problem because it is not confined to the field of health. This is a problem that cuts across the entire span of human experience. It has the capacity to destabilize governments, to cause the collapse of economies, to cause extreme poverty. It is not by accident that the United Nations Security Council, for the first time, debated a health issue within the context of global security. This pandemic is at that level of magnitude and gravity.

In Africa and other developing nations, care and treatment is almost non-existent….That means we are rendering millions of human beings to a death sentence. . . .We cannot leave the rest of the world behind as we go forward into the 21st century.”