It's no secret to Africans that 22 million people there are HIV positive. It's no revelation to them that in places over a third of the adults are infected. The third world death rate is so high that some companies hire and train twice as many bright young workers as they need, because they know how many will die.
The horror of AIDS abroad is no secret. However it seems somehow that American political leaders are just discovering the pandemic. Increasingly, Congressmen and Senators alike are lining up, proposing legislation to increase money for AIDS abroad.
Some of them say what's woken them up is "the children", for others it's "national security." Some activists here say "whatever it takes."
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House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO)
Sandra Thurman, director of the International AIDS Trust and former AIDS czar in the Clinton administration
Cornelius Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic.
