South Africa to Expand Effort to Combat AIDS

This from the NYTimes. South Africa plans to combat Aids epidemic reaching young children and mothers at risk. After the previous president denied Aids was linked to HIV this is very positive for South Africa.

I'm reminded of a movie I saw at the Human Rights Film Festival a couple of years ago about a Catholic Bishop working in South Africa who openly disagreed with Catholic teaching on contraception in the Aids communities/slums he was working in. It amazes me that the Catholic teaching is so rigid on this issue, to invitation of serious suffering amongst the people. People's lives are always more important than some set dogma or ideology. The sheer naivety of the idea that simply telling people to not have sex or to abstain can have such deadly consequences.

Perhaps the most shocking thing from the article is:
Harvard researchers estimated last year that the delay by Mr. Mbeki’s government in using antiretroviral drugs to prevent women from infecting their newborns earlier this decade led to the deaths of 35,000 babies, and that 330,000 people died prematurely for lack of treatment