Some light, beach reading from the Council on Foreign Relations
I hear from a lot of my friends and colleagues at NGOs, particularly world health NGOs, that the time has come for politicians to realize that health and health care are vehicles for providing security around the world.
Low and behold, a new report came out today from the Council on Foreign Relations that draws a link between the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and national security.
This is the type of visionary stuff that no one within 20 miles of the current White House has any understanding of. Which is sad, because U.S. foreign policy could use a jolt of vision these days, as opposed to war-mongers with their fingers on red buttons. (No, not that Red Buttons...the proverbial red buttons that fire missiles.)
The report was authored by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Laurie Garrett and finds that nations "with high rates of HIV infection in their productive labor forces and uniformed services have managed to remain intact, from the village level on up, through a plethora of coping mechanisms. But many of these nations are 'coping' with HIV while also experiencing massive poverty, tuberculosis, drug-resistant malaria, regional conflicts and a host of other serious challenges. HIV is exacerbating each of these problems, and they, in turn, are straining mechanisms designed to cope with AIDS to the point of failure."
Even more important, perhaps, is this statement: "In less hard-hit countries, including those in Western Europe and North America, the national security impact of HIV manifests itself in the form of anti-Western resentment over inequitable access to life-sparing drugs; the use of HIV, itself, as a weapon or accusation; disinvestment potential; increased probabilities of local instabilities in strategic areas; and rising demand for direct financial and skills investment in hard-hit areas. While concerns about potential links between the pandemic and terrorism are certainly exaggerated, the Council report finds that the HIV epidemic is contributing to social alienation and could provide areas of operation for outside terrorist forces."
The full report is available as a 72-page PDF here, which will undoubtedly break every computer that tries to access it via dial-up. But it's interesting stuff to gloss over. Here's a link to a press release talking about the report, for those who just can't squeeze in 72 pages of reading today!
Low and behold, a new report came out today from the Council on Foreign Relations that draws a link between the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and national security. This is the type of visionary stuff that no one within 20 miles of the current White House has any understanding of. Which is sad, because U.S. foreign policy could use a jolt of vision these days, as opposed to war-mongers with their fingers on red buttons. (No, not that Red Buttons...the proverbial red buttons that fire missiles.)
The report was authored by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Laurie Garrett and finds that nations "with high rates of HIV infection in their productive labor forces and uniformed services have managed to remain intact, from the village level on up, through a plethora of coping mechanisms. But many of these nations are 'coping' with HIV while also experiencing massive poverty, tuberculosis, drug-resistant malaria, regional conflicts and a host of other serious challenges. HIV is exacerbating each of these problems, and they, in turn, are straining mechanisms designed to cope with AIDS to the point of failure."
Even more important, perhaps, is this statement: "In less hard-hit countries, including those in Western Europe and North America, the national security impact of HIV manifests itself in the form of anti-Western resentment over inequitable access to life-sparing drugs; the use of HIV, itself, as a weapon or accusation; disinvestment potential; increased probabilities of local instabilities in strategic areas; and rising demand for direct financial and skills investment in hard-hit areas. While concerns about potential links between the pandemic and terrorism are certainly exaggerated, the Council report finds that the HIV epidemic is contributing to social alienation and could provide areas of operation for outside terrorist forces."
The full report is available as a 72-page PDF here, which will undoubtedly break every computer that tries to access it via dial-up. But it's interesting stuff to gloss over. Here's a link to a press release talking about the report, for those who just can't squeeze in 72 pages of reading today!
posted by MikeJ at
9:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home