AIDS and Poverty

We, as Americans, love thing simple... we also love when a single problem has a single solution. This is the case with both AIDS and poverty. It seems to me that most Americans think of these problems in America and world-wide as the same epidemics. Let me explain why they're not:

AIDS:
If you live in America, you know (or damn well should know) that using condoms helps reduce the spread of AIDS. If you don't know this, perhaps you might want to consider coming out from behind the rock you've been living under. Obviously condoms don't work 100% of the time, but they sure do work most of the time. Now, if you're living in America, and you want to be careful, you can go to your neighborhood CVS and buy a box of condoms and use them on your next "night out". In fact, it's even easier than that... if you can't afford to buy the condoms, there are places you can go to get them FOR FREE. Now, let's say you live in rural Swaziland, Africa. Unfortunately for you, CVS does not have an African Bush location, so you're kinda screwed there. Also, there's a good chance you don't have electricity, running water, an independant media, plumbing, etc. Your only contact with the outside world might just be the crazy guy from the Discovery Channel. There is probably no way that you know what a condom is, let alone that one might save your life. In fact, you might not know the nature or cause of what is killing you.

Poverty:
In America, we have things like Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, homeless shelters, work assistance, etc. If you are poor in America, you have the resources to lift yourself up from you crummy situation and better youself. I'm not saying it's easy or that everyone can do it, but it is possible. There are jobs available, and there is assistance if you pursue it. Now, I'm not saying every homeless person will be a CEO some day, but I think most homeless people of reasonable mental ability (mentally disabled homelessness is a different problem) have the ability to improve their situation, either by themselves or with the help of charities and the government (for commentary on if the govnerment should be spending money on social welfare, see the approximately 1 billion blogs on the topic). I'm also not saying that this will be easy or that people who are homeless all somehow want to be, but there is hope and a good chance for these people to life a better life. Now, lets say you live in Darfur, Sudan. You have spent most of your life enduring a genocidal, civil war. You probably live in a refugee camp on the border between Sudan and Chad. Your life expentancy is quite low because there is a good chance you will die of malnutrition, starvation, disease, rape, murder, or a genocial mass killing. There is probably a 0% chance you will ever see a full plate of food, and you will surely never eat at anything as nice as a soup kitchen. You spend you entire life hoping that a helicopter gunship doesn't fly overhead and shoot you and your family down with a spray of machine gun fire. No matter how hard you work, you will never be able to better your situation. There is no transportation to get you out of the area, and even if there was, no one would take you in. You can't even try to walk away from the refugee camp, for fear of being killed and your wife and children raped. Your only hope is that the civil war ends or that African Aid workers come and that life may be better for your children.

Now, I'm sure our government recognizes the distinction here, but I don't believe most Americans do. It's time that we recognize that there is a monumental difference between the problems here and in African, and the solutions are quite different as well. In fact, it is almost incorrect to call these the same epidemics. In America, the AIDS rate is 0.6%. In Swaziland, the rate is 38.8%. That's 65 TIMES greater! In America, the unemployment rate is about 5.5%, in Zimbabwe it's 70%. With an unemployment rate that high, how could you ever find a job?! We need to understand how different problems are around the world and start forcing our government to help these people in resonsible, ethical ways.