Senator Leticia Ramos Shahani of the Philippines and Pathfinder International, a United States-based population control organization were presented with the 1996 UN. Population Awards by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali at a ceremony held 17 July.
Ramos-Shahani, who is also the sister of Philippine President Fidel Ramos, is the Philippine Senate’s President pro-tempore, a position she has occupied ever since the Ramos Administration came to power and which she is unlikely to leave unless her brother’s administration falls or she rises to another office.
During her career in the Philippine Senate, Ramos-Shahani managed to un-seat a popular Senator opposed to population control from the Chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Women and the Family and replaced him with a population control supporter — even though Philippine public opinion favored the Senator opposed to population control.
Rumored to be among her aspirations to higher office are the Philippine vice-presidency, directorship of the UNFPA and even secretary-generalship of the United Nations itself’.
The awards, consisting of a diploma, gold medal and $12,500, are given annually to individuals and institutions for “outstanding contributions to increasing awareness of population problems and their solutions.”
Also attending was Dr. Nafis Sadik, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund and the chair of the 1994 Cairo population conference.
Shahani received her award for “more than 30 years’ leadership in population issues” and their implications for development, public health and the environment. Pathfinder International was honored for its support “of more than 2,000 population programmes in over 30 countries.”
In his acceptance speech, Pathfinder president Daniel Pellegrom blasted those members of the U.S. Congress who he said were “intent on doing damage to our cause.”
Pellegrom was referring to the recent action of the Congress in passing a foreign aid bill which drastically cut the levels of U.S. funding of foreign population projects: President Clinton was reluctantly forced to sign the legislation into law when the Congress refused to back down from its unprecedented funding reductions.
Pellegrom said that Americans “should be ashamed” of the U.S. politicians who are “denying family [planning] services and slashing reproductive health care” in developing countries.
One salient fact that Pellegrom neglected to mention, was that Pathfinder is one of the very largest recipients of U.S. population grants, receiving some 90 percent or more of its annual income from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). (See related story on page 3.)
(Associated Press and correspondents)
In the 15 years since the first cases of AIDS were recognized, HIV infection has become a global pandemic, our modern-day version of the Black Death.
By the end of 1995, 1.3 million AIDS cases had been reported from 193 countries. This statistic, however, is only a fraction of the real number. Because of misdiagnosis, incomplete reporting and under-reporting, reporting delays and, in the case of some nations, the deliberate cover-up of the true number of cases, the great majority of AIDS cases and HIV infections have yet to be documented.
Correcting for underreporting, it is estimated that 6 million AIDS cases have occurred, with over 5 million of them having resulted in death.
An estimated 24 million adults and 1.5 million children have already been infected with HIV, and nearly 10,000 new infections occur daily. In the absence of any anti-HIV vaccine, most of these infections will progress to full-blown AIDS. According to researchers, the HIV infection figures may well be conservative.
Although the long-term dimensions of the HIV pandemic cannot be forecast with confidence, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, that by the year 2000, there will be 26 million persons infected with HIV along with a cumulative total of some 10 million adult AIDS cases. At the same time, the cumulative number of HIV-related deaths in adults is predicted by WHO to rise to more than eight million.
Already, in some urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa, Western Europe, and the Americas, AIDS has become the leading cause of death for both men and women aged 15–49 years.
(Thomas C. Quinn, “Global burden of the HIV pandemic,” Lancet, Vol. 348, 13 July, pp. 99–106.)
