1,900
One Thousand Nine Hundred is:
A-The amount in SA Rands that I paid for dinner last night.
B-The number of brain cells a certain potential VP has.
C-The number of times my blog has been viewed.
D-The number of children infected with HIV today.
Answer:
D.
ONE THOUSAND, NINE HUNDRED. Of course this is just a number. Numbers don't mean anything in this day and age. If every bed in the hospital, where I train back in the US, were filled with 3 kids, that would be 1900. That's enough to fill FOUR 747 jumbo jets. That's more than 4 times the size of my graduating class at Columbine. Let me re-iterate, this is the number of CHILDREN who will be infected with HIV T-O-D-A-Y. It happened yesterday. And guess what, it's going to happen tomorrow. And the day after.
By the end of this month, that means there will be 57,000 NEW HIV infections in children.
Shit. It's just staggering when you take a minute to think about these things. I know there are many important issues in the world. Financial troubles in the US. Fear of republicans getting elected again. Zuma in SA. Floods in Texas. Neglected patient populations in the US. But to enter this world and be a statistic on the day you are born...
And 20...
20 is the absolute CD4 count of one of the teens I saw today. Vente. The number of ounces in a large drink at starbucks. 20 Lonely CD4 cells hanging out, I imagine they are much like the UN troops trying to guard Darfur. Spread here and there, too thin to actually be effective in mounting any real defense. I started this kid on antiretrovirals today. And as I wrote the scripts, said a silent little prayer that in the coming weeks, months that he doesn't get sick with some minor infection which his body can't handle, and dies of some wimpy bacterial infection.
Oh, and that figure, ONE THOUSAND, NINE HUNDRED only applies to children in AFRICA. That is more than one child every minute of every hour of every day.
Honestly, are we really doing all we can?
Doubt it.
