PUBLIC HEALTH

17 years after HIV was identified, AIDS has finally seized the attention of the international aid community. The reasons for the sharp increase in attention to AIDS are clear: worldwide, about 35 million people are now HIV positive, and of those, 95 % live in less-developed countries, with most in sub-Saharan Africa.1 AIDS is accomplishing a sweeping undoing of past human development advances, especially in southern Africa. Life expectancy has plummeted 20 years or more in heavily affected countries (www.undp.org/popin/popdiv/hivmtg/ aidsrep.pdf, accessed Dec 21). In Zimbabwe and Botswana, 70 % or more of teenage children are forecasted to die of AIDS.1 Education is being undermined, since teachers in Zambia die of AIDS nearly as rapidly as they can be trained.2 Even peace is threatened, as a future generation of “AIDS orphans ” mature without the guidance of their parents to rebuild or fight over the societies and resources of Africa.3 As the World Bank put it, “AIDS has already reversed 30 years of hard-won social progress in some countries”.4 It is now at the very centre of a global “development crisis”, and one that is hitting the world’s poorest countries the hardest. Yet, while this pandemic has been unfolding, the fight against AIDS has been substantially under-financed by governments within the heavily affected regions, and b