Information Related to "A World in Need of Hope"
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In the early 1960s, the word HOPE was associated
with a large, ocean-going ship called the SS HOPE. Your parents
may remember this floating hospital that was deployed in 1960 to assist
less-fortunate people in developing countries around the world. The SS HOPE was
the world's first peacetime hospital ship—and became widely recognized
as a symbol of American goodwill.
While the familiar block letters painted on the side of her hull were actually intended to be an acronym for "Health Opportunity for People Everywhere," people around the globe 40 years ago took the message more literally. As many viewed it, this ship was bringing its cargo of HOPE to communities where hope of any kind was too often in very short supply. In time it became a symbol of optimism and confidence that things could get better in these more beleaguered countries of the world.
In the year 2000, 40 years later, we live in a world with MANY more people—virtually three billion more people than in 1960! Yet HOPE is still something that so very few people seem to have. Choose your problem: poverty, government corruption, starvation, drought, disease. All of these serious problems plague millions around the world.
At the present rate of infection, by 2010, a child born in the African country of Botswana can expect to live less than 30 years—the lowest life expectancy in 100 years! Men in several sub-Saharan countries will greatly outnumber women because of the AIDS crisis in that region (USA Today, July 2000).
New projections of the early deaths caused by the HIV epidemic in Africa released by the International Conference on AIDS conducted in South Africa in July indicate that children in Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe can expect to live only till their mid-30's. Life expectancy in several other developing countries is dropping fast, says the report by the U.S. Census Bureau—which maps the impact of AIDS.
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