AIDS in Africa

Life on the African continent has been transformed by the lethal virus that causes AIDS —the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The decade-old AIDS epidemic has already strained the social and economic fabric of African societies, taking an especially heavy toll on women. Even the most optimistic researchers don’t expect a vaccine before 1998 at the earliest, leaving prevention as the only tool available to stem the spread of HIV.

The statistics are daunting: the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that one in forty Africans is infected with either HIV-1 or HIV-2, a second AIDS virus that predominates in Western Africa. Among those infected are
six million adults and seven hundred fifty thousand children; best e...