According to the article, Tanzania is facing severe financial aid cutbacks
to fund its HIV/AIDS programs.
Even
though, the percentage of the Tanzanian population with contracted HIV/AIDS has
decreased over the past ten years, with the prevalence in the last four from
5.7% to 5.1%, still is a major health concern for the Tanzanian
government.
“
However, it has been alarmingly noted that new
infections especially among the youths and special groups like prisoners and
prostitutes have been increasing.In recent past foreign aid and monetary
support came from the United States, Global Fund, World Bank, and many
countries throughout Europe, but with the economic crisis that has gripped the
world, these countries have had to reduce its financial support globally, and
usually health aid is the first to go.
The
struggle for the Tanzanian government is a budgetary one, where these developed
countries and financial institutions used to cover approximately 90% of its
HIV/AIDS programs, but now only have reduced that by 60%.
This leaves a significant gap for the
governmental budgetary committee to make up where it used to be a rather small
one.
Fortunately, the Tanzanian
government realizes that there is going to be a significant financial downfall
to supports its HIV/AIDS programs and have a proposed budget to overcome these
downfalls, but the details are being kept very secretive until it has been
officially approved by the Cabinet.
HIV/AIDS is a well known problem associated with the African
continent. Being that it is the leading
cause of death within the continent, it becomes a very serious social
problem. Majority of the African continent
is underdeveloped and relies on more developed countries for financial aid, not
only for health and medical issues that have seemed to consume the continent. Historically, developed countries have taken
advantage of the lesser developed countries of the African continent, and where
that is still true today, it appears to be more of the global corporations that
are exploiting the resources of the land.
The outward persona for a more developed country is to be “above” such
things as exploitation. That is why the
use of aid for such serious issues like HIV/AIDS gets so much positive
attention for those that support the eradication of these types of
diseases. But, the reality is that if
these countries truly cared and believed in bettering the global fight towards
these illnesses, then they would not reduce their financial aid so drastically
at a time when clearly it benefits. I
can understand that in this global economic time the need to cut back spending
and reduce the overall budget, but it comes at the expense of others who desperately
needs its support.
Matt Partridge
03/01/2013 at 3:07 pm
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