Carla Bruni Sarkozy Joins the fight for AIDS

AP foreign,
December 1 2008

Associated Press Writer= PARIS (AP) - France's glamorous first lady threw her considerable star power behind the global fight against AIDS on Monday, as the world tallied the victims of the HIV virus that infects a new person every 15 seconds.

As ceremonies marked World AIDS Day, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy signed on to become a goodwill ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which said it has provided lifesaving treatment to two million people living with HIV worldwide.

"I think the world has become used to AIDS," the model-turned-singer told a news conference in Paris. "We no longer see it as a scandal or an emergency." more>> 

Perhaps something got lost in the translation here; AIDS is both a scandal and an emergency, because it's still claiming millions of lives. So, if Bruni is to become an ambassador, or the new face of AIDS, I think she needs to choose her words a bit more carefully.

Perhaps people are more accepting  of AIDS than in earlier times because the sexual stigma that was originally attached to the disease has been diluted by the non-sexual transmission infections which prove that you can contract AIDS if you are sharing needles, or if you're a fetus with an infected mother, chances are quite strong you'll be an AIDS baby. 

While there are over 33 million people worldwide infected with HIV AIDS worldwide, the majority of them are in Africa. The problem received attention from our own President Bush during his second term where he seemed to have taken a vigorous interest in combating this modern day plague. One of the major efforts has to be education, as there are too many myths which are pervasive where people are prone to superstition and stick to old wives' tales to "cure" themselves of the disease. 

Former President Clinton has also made some dents into the mortality rate of AIDS through his global initiative effort. He negotiated with drug companies to make generics and sell them at lower than market pricing so as to enable affordability of treatment. In the U.S. an AIDS sufferer can go bankrupt if he/she were to pay for the cocktail of drugs needed to keep the disease in check.