A war still to be won

摘要

World AIDS Day on December 1st provoked the usual flurry of reports, meetings and soul-searching in South Africa: unsurprisingly, since it is still the country with the world's largest number of people infected with HIV, the virus that causes the disease. Estimates range from 4.5 to 6.2m in a population of some 45m. The United Nations body that combats the blight, UNAIDS, says the virus has spread astonishingly fast, from less than 1% of South Africa's adults infected in 1990 to almost a quarter of them today. The government has been lambasted for its lethargic response to a pandemic that kills close to a thousand people a day. But there is pro- gress at last, even if it is still too slow.