Improving Health Infrastructure, Sanitation Key in Fighting HIV/AIDS, Other Pandemics, Editorial Says

"If the United States and other wealthy nations did more to help provide basic health care and sanitation around the world, they wouldn't have to work so hard to combat pandemics such as AIDS and tragic rates of infant mortality," a Detroit Free Press editorial says. It is important for developed nations to work to improve basic health care throughout the world by setting aside money and putting pressure on leaders of developing countries to invest in their health systems, "even if it's not as sexy as the disease of the week," the editorial says. In addition, it is important to focus on "population control, as much as some extremists hate to admit it," the editorial says. The world's health problems may seem "insurmountable," but it will "hel[p] to start at the beginning, with healthy moms, healthy babies and a healthy medical system," the Free Press concludes (Detroit Free Press, 1/3).