Epidemics have always belonged to the horrors of this world. The black plague and cholera, tuberculoses and malaria - just to name a few examples. But all the previous horrors have been surpassed by an epidemic that is spreading like wildfire worldwide: Aids.

According to the most recent report by the UN, 40 million people are now infected with HIV. A third of them alone, are in Africa, south of the Sahara. We have almost grown accustomed to the fact that this part of the earth especially suffers under the scourge of epidemics. However, surprised and concerned, we read that last year Aids spread most rapidly in the Ukraine and other east European countries. Approximately 250,000 people became infected with HIV there. According to the UN report, the reason for this increase was mass unemployment and the uncertain economic situation in eastern Europe. This has diminished social and cultural norms, whatever that may mean.

Especially tragic is a report of the Children's Aid Project of the United Nations, according to which 70% of girls between 15 and 19 years of age in Somalia have never heard of the immune deficiency disease. In Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone, the number is more than 40%, according to the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung (a German newspaper). The situation can hardly be more bizarre: In a globalized world diseases are also globalized, to the loss of the losers of globalization, who don't even know what threatens them. The Aids epidemic is one of the components that give our time apocalyptic traits - along with the ecological collapse and increasing devastation by storms and earthquakes. 

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