People Are Dying of AIDS in Venezuela

As bad as it is, AIDS/HIV isn't generally fatal, given access to decent medical care and medications.

I guess just even decent care's no longer the case in Venezuela.

Will this make progressives rethink their utopian schemes? Undoubtedly no.

At Toronto's Globe and Mail, "In Venezuela, a once-leading AIDS program lies in ruins":

People are dying of #AIDS in #Venezuela today in a way and in numbers they die nowhere else in the world https://t.co/HEw10hE5W7

— Stephanie Nolen (@snolen) June 22, 2017

More than a decade ago, the country was lauded for its treatment program. Now, Venezuela is years into a political and economic crisis.

Juan Coronel was so thin that his kneecaps jutted out like tent poles in his sweatpants. He was 39 when I met him a few weeks ago, with reddish-brown hair that clung to his scalp like a baby’s and deep hollows below his cheekbones. His voice was soft and raspy, and he seemed dazed at his own fragility. “I need to go and look for medicine,” he said, “but I’m having trouble getting around.”

I had not seen a person who looked like Mr. Coronel – a person dying of untreated AIDS – since I covered the pandemic in Africa at its height more than a decade ago. In fact, there is nowhere in the world today where people are dying of AIDS at the pace and in the sheer numbers that they are in Venezuela: Even the poorest African countries today have HIV treatment programs. They still don’t reach everyone, and people are still dying, or getting treatment only after they become very ill – they may come to look as Mr. Coronel did when I met him. But in other countries, they are the exception. Today, in Venezuela, his case is the rule...

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