Tsunami and AIDS

It has been gratifying to see the strong humanitarian response on the part of the rest of the world to the tsunami disaster in Asia. However, it appears to take a singular dramatic turn of events to bring out this impulse in all of us. The AIDS epidemic is the equivalent of the tsunami on an ongoing basis. To his credit, this point was made recently by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In Canada the person who has made the greatest efforts to bring the AIDS epidemic in Africa to public awareness is Stephen Lewis, who has established a foundation with the objective of "easing the pain of HIV/AIDS in Africa".