Big Think

Question: How is your work in Africa different?

Tom Freston: Well I’m not a big expert, but I can say in terms of, you know, the AIDS . . . HIV-AIDS issue in the developed countries, while it isn’t contained, has been, you know . . . we’re in a place that has a medical infrastructure. It has an educational infrastructure. So people are aware of, to a large extent, how this disease is transmitted; what kind of behaviors they need to adopt to to avoid getting it; the fact that drugs are available should you get to be HIV-positive or, you know, eventually get AIDS. I mean there’s a lot of safety nets. There’s a lot of resources. When you look at countries that have no medical infrastructure; that have one doctor for 100,000 people; that have no ability for any drugs to get through; where there’s no real system for distributing drugs or getting out the most basic information, it’s like you’re on the moon compared to what you would have dealing with an issue like this in . . . in a developed country. And you’ve got . . . you’ve got countries in Africa where if you look at certain age groups, 25, 35 percent of the people are HIV-positive. I mean it’s a massive epidemic and it’s, you know . . . affects everybody. It isn’t just restricted to certain segments of the population. You know so you get 6,000 people a day dying just in Sub-Saharan Africa from AIDS none of whom really would need to die if they just had access to pills that cost just a dollar or $1.20 a day. Sort of mind boggling that all these things can go on simultaneously on the same planet. All this wealth, all this comfort, all this infrastructure, and you’ve got, you know, one out of six people in the world still living under a dollar a day. It’s an old problem, but in a sense more magnified now.

Recorded On: 7/6/07