Created: San Francisco Collective, 1990
Medium: Copy machine printed
Dimensions: 11 x 17”
This poster, one of four made for the 1990 International AIDS Conference in San Francisco, focuses on AIDS in Africa. As of 1990, half of HIV infected people were in sub-Saharan Africa. World-wide, 80% of women with AIDS were in Africa. 600,000 African children under the age of five were HIV-infected. Contributions to Africa by the US and other western countries was less than $200 million per year, the amount of the cost of caring for 15 people in the US. Yet inside the US people of color and women were also not getting treatment, a fact noted in a report issued in 1990. While it continued to cut funds for AIDS treatment and education, the US military was spending $24 million per day in the Middle East. It took until the 2000s for affordable drug treatments to be offered to African countries. Unfortunately, due to the lack of funding for infrastructure and treatment, people continued to die at epidemic levels. Ten years after this poster was made 1.3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa died of AIDS with many more millions still dying in epidemic proportions in the decades since 2009.
For more information on Aids in Africa during that time, see page 8 of the
1990 Fall issue of the John Brown AntiKlan Committee newsletter
Image: From Africa—A Doctor taking blood from a women patient. Sign in the background: Love Carefully, your next sexual partner could be that very special person. The one that gives you AIDS. Words: African people under attack. More than 5 million African will die of AIDS by the year 2000. Fight Racism, Fight AIDS.
Color: black ink on white paper.
Date: Made for SF AIDS Conference held in 1990 – one of four posters.
Sponsor: Prairie Fire Organizing Committee
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