AIDS Threat Looms Large in Botswana

An epidemic of AIDS that afflicts more than a third of the population of Botswana threatens to undermine one of the continent's most democratic and educated countries. "AIDS is the main topic of conversation in Botswana," said Edmund Dladla, national coordinator of the Botswana Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. The AIDS Institute at Harvard University says Botswana has the world's highest incidence of the disease. In Botswana, the institute has opened the largest AIDS laboratory in Africa and set up trials for a vaccine to combat the African strain of HIV.

The AIDS Institute has been collaborating with the Botswana Ministry of Health on AIDS research for the past five years. An article in the weekly Harvard University Gazette, extensively quoting AIDS Institute Chair Dr. Max Essex after his return from seven months in Botswana, said the incidence of AIDS among adults there is 36 percent to 38 percent. But among women most likely to become pregnant -- those 25 to 30 years old -- about 50 percent are infected. Essex is the author of the comprehensive reference work "AIDS in Africa," first published in 1994; a second edition is being published before the upcoming International AIDS Conference in Barcelona.

Essex contradicts much of the thinking that ascribes the AIDS epidemic in Africa to societal factors such as breakdown of the social structure, government instability, war and poverty, lack of education about safe sex or scarcity of condoms. None of these factors is at work in Botswana, among Africa's most stable, affluent and well-educated countries, he said. He was quoted as saying he suspects that HIV-1C -- the virus prevalent in Africa, where it is spread through heterosexual sex -- may be more virulent and easier to spread than HIV-1B, the prevalent form in North America and Europe, on which most AIDS research is focused. This increases the importance of studying and devising treatment against the African form, he said.

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