It's not "just us chickens"

Meanwhile, back on the HIV/AIDS front, millions have died, hundreds of thousands are dying and millions more men, women and children are infected worldwide each year.

Officials in India are growing alarmed at the spreading infection because of "lonely" truckers using prostitutes at truck stops. Reports from the world's second most populated country state that the nation's truck drivers are triggering a pandemic within their own families and the child prostitutes that frequent truck stops across the nation.

Truckers report an average of 150 to 200 sexual encounters a year with prostitutes. Authorities say 15 to 18 percent of the drivers tested are HIV-positive. The United Nations says within the next ten years, an estimated 10 million Indians will be infected.

China has launched a campaign aimed at millions of migrating residents who are prone to this disease because of injected drug use as "the main route of transmission." Chinese authorities estimate that about 840,000 of its citizens are HIV infected with 80,000 of them with actual AIDS. Illicit sexual contact and recreational drug use are blamed. World AIDS experts believe these estimates are understated.

Figures for the rest of the world are equally grim. The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS: UNAIDS, the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the epidemic reports:

Sub-Saharan Africa has just over 10% of the world's population, but is home to more than 60% of all people living with HIV (an estimated 26 million).

In Western Europe, thousands of new infections are occurring every year and large numbers of HIV-infected persons are unaware of their HIV status. A large share of new HIV diagnoses are in people originating from countries with serious epidemics.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia the number of people living with HIV has risen dramatically in just a few years—reaching an estimated 1.4 million [920 000–2.1 million] at the end of 2004. This is an increase of more than nine-fold in less than ten years.

The sprawling region of South and South-East Asia contains a variety of AIDS epidemics, and a higher total of HIV infections and annual AIDS deaths than any region except sub-Saharan Africa.

In Latin America, only Guatemala and Honduras have national HIV prevalence of over 1%, but lower prevalence in other countries disguises serious, localized epidemics.

In the United States of America the epidemic has altered demonstrably during the past decade. An estimated 40,000 people have been infected with HIV each year in the United States in the last ten years, but the epidemic is now disproportionately lodged among African Americans and is affecting much greater numbers of women. In 2003, African Americans accounted for at least 25% of all AIDS cases, compared with 20% in 2001.

(Source: UNAIDS www.unaids.org/en/default.asp)

The UN agency reports the number of people living with HIV in the world today has risen to 40 million. They say approximately five million people were newly infected with HIV in 2004 with more than Three million people dying in 2004. Of the new infections, 4.3 million were adults, 700,000 were children.

The potential bird flu scare is scary, but the AIDS pandemic has proven itself deadly. While bad farming practices and greed can be blamed for one, a cascading breakdown of global morals is the reason behind the other. Both could be avoided if man would simply obey the laws of the Great God of the Universe.

Jesus Christ warns us in Matthew 24:7 that a time would come when pestilences would roam the earth. "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and their will be famines, pestilences [disease epidemics of unprecedented proportions] and earthquakes in various places."

Tomorrow's World editor Roderick C. Meredith writes: "We are now at a turning point in human affairs! As traumatic world events begin to speed up and intensify their effects on each other, our creator must and will intervene!" Read the rest of his comments in his article "Seven Reasons Why Christ Must Return!"

God speed the day when He does return!

Gary F. Ehman