11/18: The Ethics of Implementation

Frieda Behets and Stuart Rennie's article mentions a lot of important issues surrounding the interventions that have been put into practice to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I especially appreciate that they address the effect international aid angencies like the IMF have on developing countries. One cynical but highly believeable way to look at this situation is that the IMF and other such organizations do not have the people's best interests at heart when they allow a country to sacrifice or reject outside aid money so as not to go above the ceiling income that they set for the country. It is extremely ironic that an organization whose claimed goal is to help poor countries pull themselves out of poverty, would limit how much money that country can earn when it comes to AIDS donations. It is important that we continue to examine the ethics behind AIDS intervention and treatment because AIDS affects other humans and especially with limited resources, it is extremely difficult to decide who or what country will receive money and what country won't. In the ideal world, triaging woundn't have to be a principle concept and there would be no ethical problems but since we don't live in the ideal world, we have to consider how to alleviate the problems in heavily afflicted countries while still respecting the rights of each individual. I personally think, money for treatment should be distributed based on the country with the highest prevalence and infection rates and not artibitrarily or politically which is sadly what happends. PEPFAR is a good example because there are some random coutries that were chosen that even though even a small number of HIV cases is bad, a larger one is worse and other countries with higher prevalences could have been chosen.