ABSTRACT: Entire populations in the Third World risk extinction. In India, South-East Asia, Central Africa, Western Africa and Eastern Africa, the spread of the Aids virus has reached frightening proportions, as the statistics provided by the World Health Organization show. We spoke about the problem to Italy's leading expert on the subject, immunologist Ferninando Aiuti.

(THE PARTY new, N. 11, 27 july 1993)

Has Aids really reached pandemic proportions in Africa?

AIUTI - I would say so, definitely. But this is not a recent discovery: the World Health Organization has been warning us of the situation for some time. Not in the whole of Africa, however, but in the countries of the Central and equatorial regions, such as Ruanda, Burundi, Kenya, and Uganda. Unfortunately it seems that the epidemic is now spreading in the countries along the Atlantic coast of Africa. We must obviously take account of the fact that statistics are very limited and are not subject to adequate checks due to the well-known shortcomings of the local health services. The statistics, therefore, probably underestimate the scale of the phenomenon.

What is the rate of expansion of the disease in Africa?

AIUTI - In the countries of equatorial and Central Africa and in those along the Atlantic coast, the rate of HIV infection varies from 1% to 10% of the entire population. The 18-40 age group is obviously worse affected. This will clearly have an enormous demographic impact. And this comes on top of a situation characterized by food shortages and the spread of other diseases, like malaria and the other sexually-transmitted diseases. The spread of HIV therefore aggravates a situation that is already serious.

According to the WHO, Afica is not the only region...

AIUTI - Quite right. The statistics for South-East Asia and India are even more worrying. The forecasts point to a total of 40-60 million cases of Aids in these countries by the year 2000. The new development, so to speak, is right here - in the South and the South-East of Asia. To tell the truth, a few people had raised the alarm three years ago, especially with regard to Thailand. Here 40% of drug addicts now have HIV, and 10-15% of people between 16 and 20 are estimated to have contacted the virus.

How has this tragic situation come about?

AIUTI - It is the result of the fact that prevention is impossible in these countries. It is what would have happened in Europe and North America if the alarm had not been raised in the mass media. In the African and Asian countries there are also problems of health education: it is obviously easy to organize prevention in Italy or Germany, but it is much more difficult to do so in countries like India or Thailand, where the social situation is simply dramatic.

The demographic, and therefore the social and economic consequences will be dramatic...

AIUTI - I can only repeat what the Director of the World Health Organization has said. We must also think about these countries; we mustn't just think about campaigns in the industrialized countries. Finally, we shouldn't forget Brazil, another country in which the situation could become dramatic.