Volume 5, Number 52

December 20, 2002

AIDS to Cripple Russia, China and India, Demographer Says

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM) In an article appearing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, the eminent demographer Nicholas Eberstadt argues that within the next few decades Russia, China and India will have the world’s largest number of HIV/AIDS victims, an event that “threatens to derail the economic prospects of billions and alter the global military balance.” Eberstadt is not optimistic about the prospects of averting this outcome, concluding that “although the devastating costs of HIV/AIDS are clear, it is unclear that much will be done to head off the looming disaster.”

     At the present time, 28 of the world’s estimated 40 million HIV carriers live in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Eberstadt, “Africa’s AIDS catastrophe is a humanitarian disaster of world historic proportions, yet the economic and political reverberations from this crisis have been remarkably muted outside the continent itself.” Eberstadt believes that the impact of Africa's AIDS tragedy has not been deeply felt elsewhere because of the region’s “marginal status in global economics and politics.”

     However, the upcoming shift of the center of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to the largest nations of Eurasia, Russia, China and India, “will have major worldwide repercussions.”

     In the article, Eberstadt develops a statistical model to predict the potential size and effects of the upcoming epidemic. One “intermediate-range hypothetical death toll” for these countries envisions 105 million people dying from AIDS, more than four times the total worldwide number of fatalities experienced so far. Such a death toll will result in significant population decline, as well as a decline in life expectancy. For instance, it is possible that Russia’s average life expectancy may fall by as much as a decade within the next generation.

     Because of AIDS, it will be difficult for these nations to compete in the global economy. Eberstadt cites two reasons for this, “First, by curtailing adult life spans, a widespread HIV epidemic seriously alters the calculus of investment in higher education and technical skills – thereby undermining the local process of investment in human capital. Second, widespread HIV prevalence could affect international decisions about direct investment, technology transfer, and personnel allocation in places perceived to be of high health risk.”

     According to Eberstadt, it is not too late for these nations to act. “There are still things states can do to at least contain the risk of contagion within their populations. Governments can competently monitor the spread of the disease and warn their citizens accordingly. They can engage in public education campaigns to apprise their people of the deadly risks they face with HIV, urging them to alter specific behaviors. They can attend to the explosion of curable sexually transmitted infections…And they can intervene with groups at high risk of HIV to encourage lifestyles that will court fewer dangers.”

     However, Eberstadt concludes that “governments in Eurasia are not yet doing enough of these things….When they come to their senses, the tempest will be even nearer than it is now – and they may discover that their ability to navigate out of harm’s way is more limited than they would have supposed.”

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