Over and above the personal suffering that accompanies HIV infection wherever it strikes, the virus in sub-Saharan Africa threatens to devastate whole communities, rolling back decades of progress towards a healthier and more prosperous future.
Sub-Saharan Africa faces a triple challenge of colossal proportions:
bringing health care, support and solidarity to a growing population of people with HIV-related illness, reducing the annual toll of new infections by enabling individuals to protect themselves and others, coping with the cumulative impact of over 17 million AIDS deaths on orphans and other survivors, on communities, and on national development. Millions of adults are dying young or in early middle age. They leave behind children grieving and struggling to survive without a parents care. Many of those dying have surviving partners who are themselves infected and in need of care. Their families have to find money to pay for their funerals, and employers, schools, factories and hospitals have to train other staff to replac them at the workplace.