How to live with it, not die of it

摘要

Time is supposed to be the great healer. Not for AIDS. For AIDS, time is simply the great killer, as far as most people are concerned anyway. It need not be so. In the rich world, the availability of anti-retroviral drugs means that most people infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can lead more-or-less normal lives, for years if not decades. But poor countries cannot afford these drugs. In due course, those of their citizens who are infected simply develop AIDS, and die. In Africa, the continent with the greatest number of sufferers―over 70% of the total―an unimaginable human tragedy is now unfolding. It is a tragedy, moreover, that affects many more than the 28m or so Africans living with the virus. AIDS blights almost every activity of government, every facet of the economy, every aspect of everyone's life. Unchecked, it will wipe out the progress of decades of development.