NaBloPoMo - With A Cause IV

I love Wikipedia because it has great things like the following chart for days when I am not feeling so energetic about my posts. When I did a search Wikipedia for "AIDS, Africa," This was my best result. From it I got the following table. As well as this one.

So what just these two charts tell us is 1) World wide, one of every one hundred people you'd come across has HIV/AIDS. In Sub-Saharan Africa it's more than 1 in 10. 2) In Botswana and Zimbabwe, as well as Lesotho, 3 in 10 are infected. Can you imagine that?

At TIME.com you can find the article, "Death Stalks A Continent." In it we learn that one cause of AIDS is that AIDS patients are afraid to admit their disease, for fear that they will be made social outcasts. Millions are not educated about HIV/AIDS, and how it is spread, and even though many people are educated, they still allow AIDS to spread sexually. Of course, a large part of Africa is also extremely poor, leading to an inability to care for one's self financially - including health care, transportation to a treatment center or the ability to simply eat well enough to stay nourished.

Another thing we learn from the TIME is that the reason women are so susceptible to HIV/AIDS is that it is not uncommon for a man to be unfaithful, and a woman is criticized for asking her husband to use protection. So as the article states it, "[An African women] risk[s] [her] life in every act of sexual intercourse." According to UNAIDS.org over the past two years the rate of infection in girls and women in every region of the world. In Sub-Saharan Africa, females make up nearly 60% of the infected population.

This is nowhere near the information I could give you on HIV/AIDS infection. I instead encourage you to do some look around the web. Visit UNAIDS.org - Women, and learn something. Or read Stop Violence Against Woman - FIGHT AIDS. Or go to Interact Worldwide to learn about World Aids Day and what you can do to help make a difference.