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The HIV/AIDS pandemic is affecting the security of countries by weakening their economies, government structures, military and police forces and other social structures, according to a new report.
'HIV and National Security: Where are the Links?' found that leading researchers and government officials had disputed the link between HIV/AIDS and national security, partly due to a tendency to define it in strictly military terms.
A challenge facing developing nations was that, if they were unable to provide universal access to antiretroviral therapy they could, out of desperation, provide treatment only to certain "trained elites", such as military leaders or high-level civil servants, warned the report by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Author Laurie Garrett noted that countries now at the beginning of the epidemic or with high infection rates hadn't even begun to imagine the impact of the disease on their economy, social stability and armed forces.
The full report can be viewed at: http://www.cfr.org/pub8248/laurie_garrett/hiv_and_national_security_where_are_the_links.php.
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