The virus has spread extremely rapidly in Botswana. Two decades ago, virtually no one there was HIV-positive. By 1992 an estimated 20 percent of sexually active adults were infected. By 1995 that proportion had reached one-third, and today it is roughly 40 percent. In Francistown, Botswana’s second largest city, nearly half of all pregnant women in the main hospital test positive for HIV. The picture in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa is nearly as dire. AIDS has killed Zulu nurses in South Africa, Masai teachers in Tanzania, Kikuyu housewives in Kenya, Pygmy elders in Uganda. HIV infection rates range from around 6 percent in Uganda to 39 percent in Swaziland.
Such numbers are