global challenge: HIV/AIDS and other diseases

This generation can live to see the end of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis worldwide.

What is malaria?

According to the World Health Organization, malaria is one of the world's most common and serious tropical diseases, is a protozoal infection transmitted to humans by mosquitoes.

Each year, malaria causes at least one million deaths and an additional 300 to 500 million clinical cases, the majority of which occur in the world's poorest countries. More than 41% of the world's population is at risk of acquiring malaria, and the proportion increases yearly due to deteriorating health systems, growing drug and insecticide resistance, climate change, and war.

High-risk groups include children, pregnant women, travelers, refugees, displaced persons, and laborers entering endemic areas.

Every 30 seconds, an African child dies from a malaria infection transmitted by a mosquito bite. Every day 25 million pregnant African women risk severe illness and harm to their unborn children from a malaria infection.

What can we do about malaria?

Malaria can be prevented through a simple, inexpensive measure: sleeping each night under a net treated with insecticides that kill mosquitoes.

An insecticide-treated net effective for four years costs just (US) $4 to $6, but most Africans cannot afford them.

What is HIV/AIDS?

With only 10% of the world’s population, sub-Saharan Africa is home to 92% of the world’s AIDS orphans and 70% of all people living with HIV.

AIDS is the fourth-leading cause of death around the world.

In 2002, approximately 1.2 million women and 610,000 children under the age of 15 died of AIDS-related causes.

Half of all new infections—almost 6,000 every day—occur in people under age 24.

Photos: Jude Boja and Cecilia Ajom

What You Can Do About HIV/AIDS

For more information about what YPW participants are doing about HIV/AIDS, click here. You can also:

Know the facts about transmission. You can get HIV by being born to an infected mother, by sharing needles with someone who is HIV+, or from unsafe sex with an infected partner.
Talk about AIDS — with friends, family and most especially sexual partners. This is one of the best ways to protect ourselves and to end the silence and stigma that surround HIV/AIDS.
Fight for $30 billion in funding from the U.S. by 2008, with $5.4 billion this year.
Appeal to the U.S. government to support the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria.
Demand access to life-saving drugs by protecting the right to health over the right to intellectual property in trade agreements.
Demand prevention programs that are comprehensive and follow science, not politics.
Cancel the debt of highly-indebted, AIDS-stricken countries.

What is tuberculosis (TB)?

TB is a disease of poverty. It is widely recognized that the poorer the community, the greater the likelihood of being infected with it.

A lack of basic health services, poor nutrition and inadequate living conditions all contribute to the spread of TB and its impact upon the community.

Poor nutrition and an inadequate diet weaken the immune system and increase the chances of infection. Overcrowded and poorly ventilated home and work environments common in poor countries make TB transmission much more likely.

Tuberculosis has killed more people than any disease in history.

TB is a disease caused by a germ called mycobacterium tuberculosis. What makes TB such a health threat is that it is not only contagious, it spreads through the air. So when an infected person coughs, sneezes, spits, or even just talks, they’re spreading the bacteria. Other people become infected when they breathe in the now air-borne bacteria.

People living with HIV are more likely to die of tuberculosis than any other infection.

What can we do about TB?

TB can be cured! A full drug course costs about $10. These drugs are readily available, but not where they are needed most.

Where can I learn more?

Check out The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
Visit the Stop TB Partnership to see what people are doing to get these medications to the people who need them.

What can we do?

If you're a high school student interested in starting a Global Action Club at your high school addressing HIV, AIDS and other diseased contact us.