Dr. Paul Farmer’s visit to the UW last Monday left a lasting impression on the campus, and as World AIDS Day (Dec. 1) draws nearer, many humanitarian organizations are capitalizing on the attention drawn to the crisis, collecting and distributing more donations and relief aid than normal.

The progress is encouraging. A study recently published in The Lancet, a British journal, reported that condom use among African women was at its highest rate ever – 18.8 percent – in 2001, the end of the study’s data collection period.

Moreover, the Associated Press has reported that the United States will distribute 486 million columns to other nations this year — triple the number distributed in 2001.

(Product) Red and fundraising campaigns in other nations are or will be contributing increasingly many millions of dollars to AIDS relief. Nonprofit organizations are also amassing larger and larger contributions.

Through a concerted global effort, then, an impact has been made in combating the international AIDS pandemic.

But in all our enthusiasm, have we forgotten about the domestic AIDS crisis?

The prevalence of AIDS in the U.S. prison system is three times that in the general population. As a direct result, since 40 percent of U.S. prisoners are black, the prevalence of AIDS is 10 times greater for blacks than whites.

Only five percent of prisons in the nation make condoms available to prisoners. The other 95 percent either fail to provide or outright ban condoms, and prisoners who engage in sexual activity are subjected to the gamut of sexually transmitted diseases.

A coalition of The National Minority AIDS Council, medical leaders and black lawmakers has recommended that condoms be made available to all prisoners nationwide.

If the purportedly progressive new House and Senate are worth their hype, lawmakers will heed the advice. Depriving prisoners of condoms in hopes they’ll abstain from sex is akin to propounding abstinence in teens utterly ineffective.