MOZAMBIQUE: AIDS - THE SILENT ATOMIC BOMB (2002)
More than a million people in Mozambique are HIV positive – 13% of the population. Treatment for the virus costs 350 dollars per person for a year, but the annual budget for health care is only 10 dollars per year per head. As a consequence of AIDS, life expectancy in Mozambique will have fallen from 43 to 27 by 2010, a level not seen since the 19th century. Photographer Francesco Zizola documented the crisis, and took its title MOZAMBIQUE: AIDS – THE SILENT ATOMIC BOMB (2002) from a speech by the prime minister of the country. He had warned that the consequences of AIDS are greater for the continent than if an atomic bomb had been dropped on Africa. In the latter case, at least the international community would have reacted, Zizola thinks. As it is, the ‘silent atomic bomb’ continues to explode, without the world doing anything.
