President Bush has asked Congress to increase funding to fight AIDS by $30 billion over the next five years. He also hopes the increased funding will more than double the number of people who can be treated, from 1.1 million to 2.5 million.

“This money will help get more programs and give people free access to hospitals,” said Milly Kanobe, vice president of the African Students Association and graduate student in agronomy from Uganda.

According to a Washington Post article, about 40 million people worldwide are infected with AIDS or HIV, and last year 3 million people died from infections. According to www.bbcnews.com, three-fourths of deaths from AIDS occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa last year, and two-thirds of those living with HIV also live there.

“Uganda in particular was real bad in the early 1990s, with a high percentage of people with AIDS,” Kanobe said.

She said since 2000, there has been a lot of progress and the number of people with AIDS has gone down in Uganda.

This isn’t the case for most Southern African countries. The life expectancy in Swaziland and Botswana is in the mid-30s, according to www.washingtonpost.com,

“Some countries are so poor that people have no money to go to hospitals, and then they just die,” Kanobe said.

According to www.washingtonpost.com, AIDS has created 13.2 million orphans. Of those orphans, 12.1 million are living in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“If there is no place for the orphans to stay, there is no way for them to be protected,” said Catherine Thomas, senior in pre-journalism and mass communication from Sierra Leone.

There were 4.3 million new infections in 2006, with 65 percent of those occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to an article from USA Today. President Bush believes that the increased funding will help prevent more than 12 million new infections in the next five years.

Kanobe thinks the funding could help keep the outbreaks at ease, but only if countries have more resources and access to drugs.

Thomas said she believes African civil wars is one reason the AIDS epidemic got so out of hand.

“During the Congo civil wars, the rebels continued to spread the disease,” Kanobe said.

Kanobe says there are now radio and TV adds that explain the threat of AIDS. “Since 2000, Uganda is progressing and has made great improvment,” Kanobe said.