Hi Dr. Mansour:

I have followed Hamjatta's interesting posts regarding the HIV epidemic in
Africa.  I also read the NYTimes special on the conference in South Africa
that was published in last Sunday's paper.  Nevertheless, I am a bit
disappointed by your attempt to explain the rapid spread of this pandemic
through Islam.  You proceed further to state that lashing human beings a
hundred times and stoning adulterers to death is a justified solution towards
solving this problem.  I could hardly disagree more. First, most countries
cannot introduce these draconian methods into their current law system.
Sharia is not culturally inherent to most countries, particularly African
ones.  If Islam is the end all solution to this problem, then tell me how
polygamy is a positive practice in the ongoing efforts to reduce the growing
HIV positive population in Africa?

But, back to the pressing issue, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Mandela and
Thabo Mbeki that we should focus more on education and the spread of
knowledge about this terrible epidemic as opposed to spending tons of money
on expensive anti-aids drugs.  This, because without proper education about
the disease, the introduction of these drugs will be a short term solution
and not a long term one.  In fact, our next door neighbors, were cited at the
conference as one of the countries that has been particularly successful with
the educational alternative.  Senegal, through the aggressive dispersal of
information, has seen her HIV rate drop drastically.

On a final note, your proposed solutions to the problem are positive.  But
you also claimed that we should stop wasting millions on conferences etc.  To
the contrary, Aids conferences are extremely important.  It allows countries
to adopt successful strategies that others have used to combat the spread of
this disease.  I believe that we have made some giant steps towards finding
ways to solve this pandemic.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------