HIV/AIDS Is Both Diplomatic and Health Issue, Opinion Piece Says
The fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic is increasingly creating intersections between diplomatic and health issues, CBS News State Department reporter Charles Wolfson writes in a CBSNews.com "Diplomatic Dispatches" opinion piece. According to Wolfson, foreign diplomats from 86 embassies in Washington, D.C., attended World AIDS Day ceremonies at the State Department to hear Secretary of State Colin Powell and HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson "shine a bureaucratic spotlight" on HIV/AIDS, a problem that "affects all of them and for many, the very governments they serve." Wolfson writes, "What Powell is not saying directly, but only implying, is that if the AIDS 'pandemic' is not stopped, many governments in the Third World will collapse because people will not only not have health services to care for them, they will also not have functioning government services across the board." Wolfson concludes that it is "quite clear" that "no administration in Washington wants to have to deal with chaos throughout the developing world," adding, "If that scenario is allowed to play out, the cost in both human and economic terms will be not only too high to pay, but also too high to even contemplate" (Wolfson, "Diplomatic Dispatches," CBSNews.com, 12/6).
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