HIV in Africa: What Is the Future?

Oub-Saharan Africa has less than 10 % of the world's popu-lation but suffers a disproportionate amount of the world's problems. Unchecked population growth, poor economic development, periodic drought, and protracted civil unrest have led to environmental degradation and mounting exter-nal debt, which has resulted in a decade of mostly falling per-capita incomes. This in turn has led to worsening health status. As if these burdens were not enough for Africa, the pandemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infec-tion has spread more extensively in Africa during the last decade than in any other region of the world. Almost 6 mil-lion persons are infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and the World Health Organization (WHO) currently esti-mates that almost one African adult in 40 is already infect-ed (1). Sub-Saharan Africa currently accounts for over 60