Can someone please help me identify the thesis statement in this article?

CNN) -- In coming to grips with AIDS, the worst health calamity since the Middle Ages and one likely to be the worst ever, consideration inevitably turns to the numbers.

According to estimates from UNAIDS, an umbrella group for five U.N. agencies, the World Bank and the World Health Organization, 34.3 million people in the world have AIDS -- 24.5 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly 19 million have died from AIDS, 3.8 million of them children under the age of 15.

Among the other statistics:

* 5.4 million new AIDS infections in 1999, 4 million of them in Africa.
* 2.8 million dead of AIDS in 1999, 85 percent of them in Africa.
* 13.2 million children orphaned by AIDS, 12.1 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
* Reduced life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa from 59 years to 45 between 2005 and 2010, and in Zimbabwe from 61 to 33.
* More than 500,000 babies infected in 1999 by their mothers -- most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

Finally, this: The bubonic plague is reckoned to have killed about 30 million people in medieval Europe. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that AIDS deaths and the loss of future population from the deaths of women of child-bearing age means that by 2010, sub-Saharan Africa will have 71 million fewer people than it would otherwise.

The numbers are staggering, but they do not begin to encompass the suffering and the dramas that put faces on the epidemic.

I chose this sentence as the thesis. Am I right?: Please help!!!
Nearly 19 million have died from AIDS, 3.8 million of them children under the age of 15.

3 answers

Since the article cites many statistics, this appears to be the thesis statement:

In coming to grips with AIDS, the worst health calamity since the Middle Ages and one likely to be the worst ever, consideration inevitably turns to the numbers.

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