Saturday, May 17, 2003


CARRIBEAN CRISIS
Since January, he has wasted away from diarrhea. He insists that the local clinic does not know his illness. But a health worker confirms what others only whisper: he is dying from AIDS, one of about half a million people with H.I.V. in the Caribbean, where the infection rate is the highest outside Africa.

While the sheer scale of Africa's epidemic has tended to overshadow the problem here, health experts and political leaders warn of the potential for devastation in a region of small, image-conscious countries that depend on a limited pool of labor and resources, as well as tourism.

Some 40,000 adults and children in the Caribbean are believed to have died of the disease in 2001 alone. It is already the leading cause of death among young men.

"The overall threat is very simple; it is affecting the most productive population in the most productive age group," said Patricio Marquez, a principal health specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank, which is financing a regional response to the disease. "There is the risk that an entire generation could be wiped out." NY Times

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