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Loading ...Guyana credits U.S. campaign with slashing AIDS rate
03.16.2009 8:52am EDT
(Georgetown, Guyana) Guyana says a U.S.-funded AIDS prevention program has helped slash the HIV infection rate in the South American country from nearly 3 percent to about 1 percent.
Health Minister Leslie Ramsammy says the program led by the U.S. Agency for International Development “is a huge success story.”The $20 million public awareness and prevention program was launched five years ago. Some of the grant aid went to non-governmental organizations that staged skits around the former British territory of 750,000 people to warn of the dangers of promiscuous behavior and the effects of the virus.
Ramsammy said the government has tracked the decline of the virus by testing nearly half the population over the past three years.
It’s revolting that we can help Guyana (which we should) but that we can’t do the same in the capital city of the USA. We should be ashamed of ourselves. That fact is a source of embarrassment to me.
I (with other volunteers) put together hundreds of free meals for families around DC ravaged by HIV/AIDS and now by other debilitating illnesses that make preparing food at home difficult like cancer, lung and heart disease, etc. DC is a beautiful city but one with high rates of severe illnesses. There needs to be a better job done in DC of teaching the many poor people living in DC to try to take better care of themselves and also to provide those who want such things the means to do healthwise better for themselves, diet and otherwise.
Here we are the USA trying to either police the world or to “save” the world from itself, but can’t even improve literacy, education, poverty, HIV/AIDS, homelessness and other conditions in its own capitol city! Shameful!