While watching a CNN special on Oprah's school for girls in South Africa, I noted much lamenting about AIDS orphans and their sad plight. But what is really causing the number of orphans to rise?
To prevent children from becoming AIDS orphans, one must keep their parents alive, not by treating them with drugs, which is a helpful stop gap but nothing more, but by preventing the parents from getting infected with HIV in the first place.
First, the virus is transmitted overwhelmingly from men to women. (Mother-to-child transmission, whether through pregnancy or breastfeeding is a much smaller factor.) In Africa and many parts of Asia, women have little or no control over their bodies, meaning wives cannot refuse sexual advances from husbands, victims of forced prostitution cannot refuse customers. Nor can these women and girls demand that their husbands or customers use condoms. So the answer is clear. The reason the number of AIDS orphans continues to grow is largely the behavior of MEN.
Let the world call out these men who are selfish and perhaps ignorant and demand that they stop behaving in an irresponsible and deadly fashion so that we no longer have to watch women and girls and their children and siblings suffer. These men will not listen to one woman. Their local society and culture should tell them this behavior is unacceptable, but since it is controlled by men, that is unlikely. The world must demand that these men change.