Out of Africa: Osagyefo Says, "HIV/AIDS is the Key to Aid. Why Fight It?"

A Miranda warning for the easily offended. You have the right to not read  — this is after all “a free world”. Whatever follows can and will be used against your prejudices. Do not, BTW,  even begin to contemplate any counter-actions, because as the child of a peasant farmer, you will not have anything to claim from me except my father's hoe.  Now we can proceed.

I have observed my government and the private sector (sometimes called NGOs) quadruple their efforts in fighting the dreaded AIDS. However as an individual who thinks with half his brain, I am totally against this continuous fight.  No offences intended to the anti-AIDS campaigners and the affected — but ask me why?

I believe as a country we benefit so much from this scourge that fighting it is equivalent to shooting ourselves in the foot.  I can see some of you frowning.  How foolish!

Look at it this way. AIDS is a thriving industry, and its economic benefits are really ballistic. It single handedly earns us more foreign exchange than all our cash crops combined. We get more funds to fight AIDS than even the money we get from selling Shimoni, UBC, CMI and even Mabira forests combined.

So I wonder why we are wasting time trying to eradicate a dependable foreign exchange earner. Instead of fighting the virus we should promote it. Just imagine if decided to go into exile — gloomy faces would galore.

We would have no state-of-the-art four wheel drive gas guzzling SUVs (as the Americans call them) on our roads, ARV's would just expire on the health stalls, and some medics I know would have no salaries. Their families would starve, and most of all there would be no Global Fund from which the former minister of health and his deputies could steal. (Purloining public funds is OK according to the President if only the stolen money is not siphoned to a foreign bank account but instead reinvested locally in the “Pearl of Africa”.)

Just think of this country suddenly free of AIDS. UN-imaginable isn't it? As a patriotic citizen of the “Pearl”, I am going to advocate for a national AIDS contraction and transmission campaign. You may unleash the black mambas on me, but I am not going to see my country go down the tubes.

My sources in the health ministry tell me that the prevalence of "HIV infection" is decreasing dramatically, and will shortly jeopardize our enviable position in the eyes of the donor countries. I believe we should give each other more AIDS to retain the AID, I know am saying this at the risk of facing the wrath of the high and mighty,  but not even the gods can touch me - I am an un-lynch-able son of the Motherland.

Osagyefo holds a master's degree in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is currently studying for his PhD in a major US university. "Like the biblical Paul who saw light after hitting Damascus", Osagyefo has "seen the HIV/AIDS lie for what it is, and has just one regret — why it took [him] so long." The photograph is of a young Jomo Kenyatta. "When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible".  

Comments

[Lee Evans]

I had a chance to see the young "Mau Mau's" tongue in cheek this morning, and before heading out to the track, I want to say something about "African AIDS and AID" that I noticed over the last 15 years or so.

There are a lot of new roads that have been built with AIDS monies, in case you were wondering why an urban epidemic in America is so heavily rural in Africa.

[Harvey Bialy]

This happened during the second round of meetings of the South Africa Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel.

One of the white, professorial, patronizing members of the loyal HIV/AIDS establishment made the *emphatic* point that before 1990 he had never seen "AIDS diseases" in the Joburg hospitals where he worked.

The Hon. Minister of Health, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who was sitting directly behind me in an area reserved for observors and guests, all of whom were strictly verboten from speaking during the working sessions, rose like a lioness and shot back: "Before the end of apartheid, MY people were not allowed in YOUR hospitals!"

The silence, as they say, was thick enough to cut with a machete, and it was at this point, I thought then and now, that the minister turned the last corner from believer to arch heretic.

All the sessions were video recorded so there is audio-visual proof of this story.