The numbers are staggering, the loss of life almost unfathomable. Of the 40 million people worldwide who have HIV or AIDS, 28 million of them live in sub-Saharan Africa. Because the most effective treatments are often expensive and unavailable, a disproportionate number of Africans are among the 3 million people killed by HIV/AIDS every year.
Malaria threatens as much as one-third of the globe’s population — more than 2 billion people — and infects up to a half-billion individuals every year. Of the 2.7 million people who die from the infectious disease each year, approximately three-quarters are young African children.
Another 2 million people, nearly all of them inhabitants of the Third World, die each year from diarrheal diseases. In the United States and other developed countries, such illnesses are often easily preventable and rarely fatal. But not for the men, women, and children in the poorest of the poor countries. It’s as if they exist in another time, when water and mosquitoes still pose grave danger and human beings are a far more vulnerable species.
This is the grim state of global health today. Yet Dr. Richard Klausner, who is tackling these and other medical crises in the developing world, is anything but disheartened. In fact, he’s unfailingly optimistic. He talks of bridling epidemics through innovative forms of intervention and accelerating the development of vaccines for HIV and malaria. He talks of creating sustainable health care and providing nutrient-fortified food. He talks of hope.
