HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa

HIV/AIDS is an infectious disease particularly prevalent in eastern and southern Africa. You need to know about it for topics on health issues, pollution and human health at risk, and development. This article describes the impacts of the disease and uses two contrasting case studies to show the effects it can have and ways in which governments can combat the disease.

Alexander Cooke

An AIDS poster in Uganda

Two-thirds of people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, although this region contains little more than 10% of the world’s population (Table 1 and Figure 1). Looking at the breakdown of new infections (Figure 2), this African crisis seems likely to worsen.

Anti-retroviral (ARV) Anti-retrovirals are drugs used to slow the development of HIV into AIDS, allowing the patient to live much longer and possibly pass on their knowledge to future generations.