This will be a depressing week for the 11,000 participants at the 13th annual International AIDS Conference that is being held in Durban, South Africa. They will be told of a grim future, and see and hear for themselves horrific examples of the toll the epidemic is already taking. Their hopes may rise as researchers and drug companies report on progress they have made in combating the disease, but they will be frustrated by the innumerable obstacles — cost chief among them — to their use.
Researchers now believe that AIDS has been with us for decades, but the disease exploded in the last 20 years. Today, 34.3 million people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The disease has killed 18.8 million people, 2.8 million last year alone. The number of children orphaned by the disease is forecast to rise to 800,000 in 2005 and 2 million in 2010.
The disease is devastating Africa, where 85 percent of infected people live. The World Health Organization last month announced that average life expectancies fell six years for sub-Saharan Africa during the 1990s because of AIDS. In several African nations, 15-year-old boys have more than a 50-50 chance of dying of AIDS.