Students can help stop spread of global AIDS
There are currently 36 million people with AIDS worldwide; 25 million of those are living in Africa. However, this is not a crisis exclusive to the African continent. Experts believe that if nothing is done, in 10 years the AIDS crisis will be worse in Asia than it is in Africa. If nothing changes, predictions indicate that there will be 100 million AIDS cases worldwide by 2005. AIDS is not just a horrific disease; it is a pandemic and humanitarian crisis of which the modern world has never encountered.
As the world's most able nation and de facto caretaker, the United States has a duty to respond to this crisis. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has estimated that it will cost about $10 billion a year to attack global AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and he set up the Global Fund to do so. Annan determined the United States would need to pledge $2.5 billion to make the fund function at its full capacity. Yet, the United States pledged $200 million. As a result of the United States' lack of global leadership, many other countries pledged well below the amounts they've been called on to contribute, with the result decreasing the amount of sorely needed global AIDS relief.
The Student Global AIDS Campaign has dedicated itself to the advocation of the dispersal of the remainder of the $2.5 billion of American funds for global AIDS relief. We have been actively working toward this goal on the local, national and international level, and have exerted our influence with Congress, the President and the United Nations. The organization has now expanded to the University of Wisconsin-Madison community, and is looking for dedicated and active individuals who will continue the fight for global AIDS relief.
If you are interested in working toward this end, please come to our organizational kick-off meeting today at 8:30 p.m. TITU, or send an e-mail to . AIDS is not a threat only facing obscure countries a hemisphere away. It is a threat that involves all of humanity from Mozambique to Madison; it is time that we as a community demonstrate our willingness to respond to that crisis.
Photographs bring reality closer to home
I would like to commend The Daily Cardinal for the picture it used on the cover of Wednesday's paper (""War at home and abroad: what's news,"" Nov. 14). It's all too easy these days to look the other way and not see the ""dirty work"" our actions require. The people who are dying may be halfway around the world, but images like this bring it home. War isn't pretty, and people should never forget that. Keep up the good work.
