United States Must Help Africa to Fight HIV/AIDS, Senate Majority Leader Daschle Says

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has said that his trip to Africa last month convinced him that the United States must assist Africa in its battle against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Associated Press reports (Brokaw, Associated Press, 9/22). Daschle and Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) traveled to South Africa, Kenya, Botswana and Nigeria in late August for a 10-day fact-finding mission to examine challenges facing the continent's development, including HIV/AIDS (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 8/23). Daschle said that the African nations were attempting to develop a strategy to better deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis, which could lead to "instability" in the countries' economies and governments. "I think that it is important for us to provide assistance to these countries because I think that if we don't, we could find ourselves in a very, very serious crisis in terms of what it could mean for terrorism, what it could mean for instability in all these countries and what ultimately it could mean for other parts of the world," Daschle said. "We can't ignore it," he added (Associated Press, 9/22).