Lesotho, Ben and I

What do you know about Lesotho?

Sincerely, until this morning the only thing I knew was that Lesotho on my map is a green spot on a pinkish territory: Lesotho is completely surrounded by South Africa. But then my friend Benedict XVI met the Ambassador of Lesotho. He seemed to know more than me about the country: I became jealous and I decided to look for some information:
Lesotho has a very small population (a bit more than 2.500.000 inhabitants) with a very high HIV rate: 25% of the adult population is HIV positive. (UNAIDS)

Life expectancy is less than 35 years. (CIA World Fact book )

Try to think about it: at the age of 35 many Italians are newlyweds, or still live with their parents delaying their adult life... They are not wrong: they have almost 50 years in front of them...

In Lesotho at the age of 35 you are a survivor.

Read this :
“For women aged 18–19 years, less than 10% are HIV-positive, but by the time they celebrate their 22nd birthday, 30% will have acquired HIV, and by the time they reach 24 years, almost 40% will have been infected. For a large proportion of young women in Lesotho, delaying sex seems simply to be postponing eventual HIV infection (NAC and UNAIDS, 2006).”

These are the reasons why I think that –especially talking about a country like Lesotho- when you say that abstinence is the only way to fight HIV/AIDS, you are a CRIMINAL. You sacrifice human lives for dogmas.

In the hope that he is simply misinformed, I leave here some links for him:
UNAIDS: http://www.unaids.org/en/
UNAIDS/WHO AIDS Epidemic Update: December 2006
Human Rights Watch: HIV/AIDS and human rights

By the way, Ben:
“The male latex condom is the single, most efficient, available technology to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.” UNAIDS
I translate for you: the only way to fight HIV/AIDS is the use of CONDOMS!