In his State of the Union speech last month, President George W. Bush called on Congress to budget $15 billion over five years to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.

"I told them I thought President Bush's promise is good," Durbin recalled. "We want to make certain we keep that promise."

Feingold, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Africa, said Bush raised expectations in Africa with the pledge.

"The people of southern Africa are very aware that the president has made this significant new commitment," he said. "They are trying to figure out whether it's really going to come, and to figure out how it's going to be used."

South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS, while Botswana has the highest infection rate.

The two senators met with government leaders, health officials, counselors and others to get a sense of the AIDS epidemic in southern Africa. They also discussed terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the diamond trade and land reform with officials.

The senators said the AIDS problem is so bad in Botswana that one politician told them she drives around in a vehicle large enough to carry coffins and ferries people to funerals.

"That's her constituent service," said Durbin.

In Capetown, South Africa, Durbin recalled seeing AIDS orphans panhandling on the street, sniffing glue. There are an estimated 2.5 million AIDS orphans in the region.

"It kills you," Durbin said.

Feingold described a center in Soweto, South Africa, in which HIV-positive mothers prepare a "memory box" with photos so their children will have something to remember them by.

"It was just awful," he said. "And yet, there was a community there." A group of 80 women sang, "Even though we have the virus, we will keep on going," Feingold said.

Feingold said he would push for more money to the global AIDS fund, because it can leverage matching donations from other countries. Bush proposes $1 billion for the fund. Feingold said he also wants to ensure that money goes to treatment as well as prevention.

Durbin said he would focus on efforts that ensure there are enough doctors in Africa.

"That might mean more money for medical schools, training in the United States, and incentives for doctors to stay in their native countries," he said.

Durbin said he also plans to bring African leaders to Washington so they can discuss the AIDS epidemic with other members of Congress.

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations on Wednesday reduced its estimate of what the world's population will be in 2050 by 400 million, primarily because of the impact of the AIDS epidemic and lower than expected birth rates.

At the dawn of the new Millennium, the U.N. Population Division forecast that 9.3 billion people would inhabit the Earth at mid-century but a new revision of the estimate projects a lower population of 8.9 billion.

About half the 400 million drop is a result of an expected increase in the number of deaths, primarily from AIDS, the forecast said. The other half is due to a reduction in the projected number of births, mainly as a result of lower expected fertility rates.

"For the first time, the United Nations Population Division projects that future fertility levels in most developing countries will likely fall below 2.1 children per woman, the level needed to ensure the long-term replacement of the population, at some point in the 21st century," said the forecast.

By 2050, it projects that three out of four countries in less developed regions will have fertility levels below replacement levels.

The report, "World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision," confirms key conclusions from previous revisions about population growth.

Despite expectations of lower fertility levels and increased death risks, global population is still expected to increase from 6.3 billion today to 8.9 billion in 2050, it said.

The Population Division warned, however, that the latest projections depend on ensuring that couples have access to family planning.

If fertility in all countries remained at current levels, it said, "the total population of the globe could more than double by 2050, reaching 12.8 billion."

But based on the new estimates, the forecast predicts that the population of more developed regions, currently at 1.2 billion, will change little during the next 50 years.

Thirty three countries are projected to be smaller at mid-century than today — Japan losing 14 percent of its population, Italy 22 percent of its population, and Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine between 30 and 50 percent of their populations.

By contrast in less developed regions, the population is projected to rise steadily from 4.9 billion in 2000 to 7.7 billion in 2050, according to the forecast.

The populations of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen, are projected to quadruple because of expected annual growth rates of more than 2.5 percent between 2000 and 2050, it said.

In the most populous countries, large population increases are expected even if fertility levels are projected to be low.

Between 2000 and 2050, the forecast said eight countries are expected to account for half the world's projected population increase — India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the United States, China, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Congo.

The 2002 Revision indicates a worsening of the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in terms of disease, deaths and population loss.

In the current decade, 46 million people are expected to die of AIDS in the 53 most affected countries, "and that figure is projected to ascend to 278 million by 2050," the forecast said.

By Alison McCook

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Thanks to relatively new and powerful HIV medications, women who became infected with HIV before birth are now living long enough to become pregnant themselves, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Thursday.

The agency describes the cases of eight women living in Puerto Rico who acquired HIV from their mothers in the womb--known as perinatal infection--and reported 10 pregnancies between August 1998 and May 2002.

As of this week, none of the seven babies born to these mothers had developed HIV, the authors report in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. All of the babies received preventive drug treatment after delivery, and four of the women consistently took anti-HIV drugs during their pregnancies.

Two of the 10 pregnancies ended in abortion, while the third ended in miscarriage.

These findings, the first to report pregnancies among women born HIV-positive, represent a "landmark" in the HIV epidemic, study author Dr. Michelle McConnell of the CDC told Reuters Health.

"They were born with HIV, and now they are not only alive, but healthy enough to have their own children," McConnell said.

And a large number of perinatally infected children are likely not far behind, she added.

"I think this is going to happen more and more," McConnell said.

During the study, the CDC researchers compared eight perinatally infected women to eight perinatally infected women who had never conceived. Women who had conceived had first done so between 13 and 19 years of age.

Relative to other perinatally infected women who had not become pregnant, those who conceived tended to learn about their HIV status at a later age and were less likely to consistently use condoms when having sex.

Half of the women who conceived were first told of their infection at age 13 or older, while half of those who had not become pregnant were told at age 12 or younger.

In terms of condom use, only two of the women who had not conceived said they were sexually active, and both reported using condoms consistently. In contrast, among the eight women who became pregnant, only two said they used condoms consistently.

Although the report is based on information from only a handful of young girls, the authors note that the findings suggest that parents of HIV-positive kids should inform their children about their health at an early age.

Teens and young adults with perinatal infection also need to discuss sexual health before they begin to have sex, the authors add.

As more perinatally infected women become pregnant, McConnell said there will be a greater need for health services tailored to meet their specific needs. These services include reproductive information, and medication during pregnancy and for the newborn, she noted.

SOURCE: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 2003;28:149-151.

By BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - The unabated flow of illegal drugs from Afghanistan through Central Asia, continuing despite the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban, is causing rising drug addiction and AIDS infections across the region, a top U.N. drug control official said Friday.

The former Soviet republics of Central Asia comprise the main transit route for Afghan opium and heroin en route to Russia and Europe. The steady flow of drugs, which returned last year to levels seen in 2000 under the Taliban regime, is leading to more addicts in the region, said Antonella Deledda, Central Asia representative for the U.N. Office for Drugs and Crime.

In Central Asia, rising abuse is also fueled by drug couriers being offered in-kind payments of narcotics, according to the annual report of the U.N. International Narcotics Control Board, which was released this week.

Drug abuse has risen most sharply in Tajikistan, with an estimated 720 addicts per 100,000 people, the report said. But the rate remains highest in Kyrgyzstan, with 1,644 addicts per 100,000 residents.

The ready availability of opiate drugs in Central Asia makes them increasingly the drugs of choice, replacing marijuana. The rise in intravenous drug use has led to an increase in HIV/AIDS infections, the report said.

As many as 80 percent of people with HIV in parts of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan contracted the disease through drug injections, according to the report.

Deledda said narcotics was a rare area where the countries of Central Asia — which since their 1991 independence have often sought to reinforce their own sovereignty, spurning regional initiatives — are willing to work together.

"Much more can be done, but this is a field in which Central Asian states are willing to cooperate," she said.

The U.N. report also expressed concern that chemicals used to refine opium are increasingly passing the other way to Afghanistan and pressed countries to reinforce controls.

Deledda expressed concern that the isolated nation of Turkmenistan hasn't provided as many statistics as in the past. According to the U.N. report, Turkmenistan hasn't reported any seizures of opiate drugs or chemicals since 2000, even though significant quantities had been found before.

A recent report by the International Crisis Group alleged high-level Turkmen government involvement in drug-trafficking.

By RAPHAEL TENTHANI, Associated Press Writer

BLANTYRE, Malawi - A senior Malawi tribal chief Friday denied AIDS existed and said thousands of deaths attributed to the epidemic were killed by a plague sent by God to punish misbehaving youth.

"There is no disease called AIDS in the country as government and other people claim," Group Village Headman Makunganya told journalists and officials from the Malawi Human Rights Commission.

At least 14 percent of Malawi's 11 million people are living with HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS, but Makunganya said it was a ploy by activists to confuse people.

He said more deaths were occurring because God was angry at the behavior of the youth and had cast down a plague.

"You won't tell me people were not dying in the past. What killed them? Was it AIDS at that time?"

Makunganya said stories about AIDS discouraged people from working hard. He said anti-AIDS messages gave the impression that everyone was on the verge of death and there was no need to plan for the future.

Asked what the media could do to combat the stigma attached to those living with the disease, he said AIDS was a figment of the imagination of Malawi's government and AIDS activists.

Orison Chaponda, the Malawi Human Rights Commission information officer, said Makunganya's remarks were unfortunate since the area he comes from is a popular tourist destination which has been hardest hit by the AIDS scourge.

Chaponda said the chief's remarks show that despite AIDS having been identified in Malawi for over 18 years there are still pockets of people who do not fully understand the dangers it poses.

By GRANT PECK, Associated Press Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand - Asia could be hit by the same kind of catastrophic AIDS epidemic as Africa, and the world's business sector must help fight the disease, international business leaders said Friday in Bangkok.

"Every day, three times as many people die of HIV as died on Sept. 11 in New York City and at the Pentagon," said Richard Holbrooke, chairman of the Global Business Coalition on HIV and AIDS. "Businesses have not scratched the surface of what they can do."

Holbrooke, a board member of several corporations who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former U.S. President Bill Clinton, said the disease is "the worst problem in the world today."

He said the world can learn from Thailand, which has used education to bring down HIV infection rates.

Asia has an estimated 7.2 million people living with HIV or AIDS, compared to 29.4 million in sub-Saharan Africa, according to U.N. statistics from late 2002.

Bill Black, co-founder and former chairman of the Thailand Business Coalition on AIDS, said Asia's current HIV and AIDS problem is just the "tip of the iceberg," and that Asia could be headed for the same epidemic level now plaguing much of Africa.

AIDS and HIV are "too big a problem for governments alone" and businesses must help, Holbrooke said.

He said companies could help by educating their employees and others, providing testing and treatment for employees, and encouraging other companies to participate.

Black was less optimistic. "The true reality is that business is only going to respond to this issue when it becomes a financial issue," he said.

Both were speaking on the eve of the Asia Society's 31st Williamsburg Conference, which for the first time includes a session on HIV and AIDS.

The conference, held Saturday and Sunday, gathers 50 leading opinion makers from the Asia-Pacific region to speak privately in small forums on leading issues of the day.

MITCHELL, S.D. - A documentary based on the case of a Huron University student convicted of spreading the virus that causes AIDS has won an award.

The Music Television feature earned the award for outstanding documentary at the Second Annual Cable Positive Pop Awards.

The piece followed the stories of four people who were diagnosed with HIV after hundreds of others were tested in the Huron area.

Nikko Briteramos was convicted of knowingly spreading the virus under a South Dakota law that makes it a crime. He received a suspended five-year prison term with several conditions, which he violated only days later. He is now serving a four-year prison sentence.

By Anthony J. Brown, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a letter sent to President Bush this week, more than 100 advocacy groups voiced their opposition to a proposed AIDS plan that would prohibit funding to foreign nongovernment organizations (NGOs) that do not separate their HIV/AIDS programs from family planning services.

Under the proposed plan, only foreign NGOs that do not offer abortion counseling or services or those that offer separate abortion services would be eligible for new AIDS funds recently proposed by the Bush administration, according to a State Department memorandum that surfaced last week.

This policy is problematic because the vast majority of organizations in Africa and elsewhere have integrated services, the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA), a non-partisan advocacy group, said in a statement. Combining services is more cost effective than maintaining separate services and better serves the needs of women, the group notes.

According to the GAA, this is the first time that the "Mexico City Policy" restrictions have been applied to HIV/AIDS programs.

The Mexico City Policy bars US funding of international groups that use non-US funds to perform or advocate for abortion, and has typically been used when it comes to funding for international family planning organizations.

The policy, so named because President Ronald Reagan announced it during a United Nations population conference in Mexico City in 1984, was in effect until 1993, when President Bill Clinton revoked it on his second full day in office. It was briefly in effect again in 1999 after Clinton and the Republican Congress fought over paying back dues to the UN, then fully restored by President Bush on the first business day of his presidency in January.

In the letter to President Bush, the advocacy groups applauded the decision to dramatically increase AIDS funding announced during the State of the Union address. However, they are troubled that the Administration is considering extending the Mexico City policy to AIDS funding.

"We are deeply disturbed to learn that the Administration is contemplating an expansion of the so-called Mexico City policy to cover some or all international HIV/AIDS funds, thereby disqualifying from US funding many organizations positioned to be key partners in carrying out your 'Emergency AIDS initiative,"' the letter states.

The idea that funding should not be provided to organizations in which AIDS programs and family planning services are integrated is "indefensible," the letter continues. Moreover, there is ample evidence that healthcare is markedly improved when such services are integrated, it adds.

"These restrictions are morally and ethically indefensible and contradict basic principles of public health, human rights, and economic efficiency," said Jodi Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity, one of the groups that signed the letter.

"For many of the world's most vulnerable women, family planning services are really the only point of contact for information about HIV/AIDS," Kate Bourne, executive vice president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, told Reuters Health. "So, why, in your effort to combat the epidemic, would you want to cut off a key means of reaching these women?"

Extension of the Mexico City policy "may not affect our vaccine effort directly, but it doesn't support the overall goal of controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic," Bourne noted.

"We were very pleased when we first heard about the additional AIDS funding being offered by the administration," Bourne said. "But, we don't want anything to stop that funding from going to places where it can work."

By DEBORAH KONG, AP Minority Issues Writer

With magazine articles and television ads, prayers and free testing, the effort to fight AIDS among black Americans is taking on new vigor in the face of bleak statistics about the disease.

Newspapers, magazines and television networks with predominantly black audiences began an unprecedented public awareness campaign in recent weeks, running stories and ads in a coordinated attempt to educate people about AIDS. The publications and broadcasters have committed to continuing the push through this year.

Independently, thousands of black churches will begin an annual "week of prayer for the healing of AIDS" at services on Sunday. And community groups nationwide offered educational programs and free testing as part of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

Experts and advocates say such undertakings are more important than ever. More blacks — roughly 152,000 — were living with AIDS in 2001, a number larger than any other racial or ethnic group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a devastating time for black America," said Debra Fraser-Howze, president of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. "We have a catastrophe on our hands."

While black organizations have been working to fight AIDS for years, the media effort, called the Drumbeat Project, is new. The Black AIDS Institute began developing it about 17 months ago: Participating media companies have promised to double their AIDS coverage this year.

Essence magazine, for example, profiled a small Florida town where 90 percent of those infected with HIV are black, and most are women.

"It's important for a black women's magazine to say this is not happening to somebody else. It's happening to us," said Diane Weathers, Essence's editor in chief. "This is our reader. These are our sisters."

The National Newspaper Publishers Association's wire service, which serves more than 220 black-owned newspapers, produced an eight-part series on AIDS.

With "the number of people it's affecting, it certainly can't be ignored," said Flo Purnell, the wire service's managing editor. "It's as important as coverage of the impending war."

The American Urban Radio Network stations and Black Entertainment Television also have agreed to run public service announcements.

Several factors historically have hampered AIDS prevention in the black community, said Howze of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

A misconception persists among some blacks, Howze said, that the government deliberately spread the disease among them. That idea is fed by the legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, when government researchers allowed poor, black men with syphilis to go untreated for decades while they studied the disease's progress.

AIDS' impact on blacks also reflects other health disparities, since blacks are more likely to die of chronic illnesses than whites, Howze said. And when it comes to talking about AIDS, the black community is "probably one of the most conservative as far as sexual conversation is concerned," she said.

Lisa Henry, 37, a volunteer AIDS educator, said young, black women who have never been told "Your life is worth it" are more likely to engage in risky behavior.

Henry, who is black, took a free HIV test Feb. 7 on National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. If she were infected, Henry said she would want to know "what I need to help myself, being an African-American woman, getting treatment, informing my children."

There's some disagreement about whether the church, a cornerstone of the black community, has done enough to combat AIDS. Howze said black churches have "done a phenomenal job." She noted that black church members sit on her group's executive committee and lead affiliates her commission works with.

But Don Sneed, executive director of Renaissance III, an AIDS service organization in Dallas, said black, gay men with AIDS may feel they cannot seek help from the church.

"On any given Sunday, in any given black church in the country, you can hear that old spiel, 'God didn't create Adam and Steve, he created Adam and Eve,'" said Sneed, who is black. "This is drilled into young black boys from the minute they hit the church."

A spokeswoman for the Balm in Gilead, a New York-based nonprofit organizing the national week of prayer, said she has seen progress.

The Rev. Alberta Ware said that when news of AIDS first emerged, it was characterized as a "gay white man's disease, so the church didn't deal with it."

"They just didn't feel it applied to them," Ware said.

Now, her group works with more than 10,000 churches. And pastors, she said, "realize it's beyond epidemic proportions."

By Matthew Tostevin

BOUAKE, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - "The girls all love us because of what we are fighting for," laughs Ivory Coast rebel fighter Mantou Cisse, surrounded by young female admirers.

"Worry about AIDS? There is no AIDS in Bouake," he says confidently in a rebel stronghold where young men with guns now lay down the law.

But there is AIDS in Bouake.

In fact it was one of the more heavily affected parts of the West African country before a war blew up last September and changed what was once a haven of stability into bloodshed and chaos.

Now the conflict threatens to encourage the spread of the HIV virus that causes AIDS and put yet another seal on Ivory Coast's hopes of ever regaining its place as a prosperous exception in a region of turmoil and despair.

Just as dangerous, the war could help fan the crisis in a part of the worst affected continent that has so far got off fairly lightly compared to southern or east Africa.

"Ivory Coast was already the country with the highest rate of infection in this region," said Pierre Mpele, the head of UNAIDS for West and Central Africa.

"Crisis situations help to spread HIV/AIDS and if it continues any longer then we fear that we will start to see an impact in the region because of the movements of people."

Ivory Coast, which drew millions of immigrants in search of its relative riches, has infection rates estimated at 10 to 12 percent of the sexually active population.

As Ivory Coast's second city, a crossroads, market center, garrison and student town, Bouake had more sufferers than most.

In a sign of what is happening elsewhere, efforts both to look after sufferers and prevent the transmission of the virus have broken down.

NO CONDOMS

"There are no condoms in town even if people want to use them and people cannot hold on forever. There is no money for campaigns to persuade people of the dangers," complained Penda Toure, who runs an AIDS project in the city.

Before the war, Toure's Center for Solidarity and Social Action was helping over 900 families, one or more of whose members was infected. Since the fighting erupted it has only been possible to establish contact with 268.

Most sufferers either fled to the main city of Abidjan or scattered back to their villages and might now be off spreading the virus again -- there is concern that infected prostitutes might have little choice but to sell their bodies again.

"The war is a catastrophe for those of us with HIV," said Sidibe Brahima, a former trader who has known he was infected since 1995, emphasizing his point with trembling arms weakened by suffering.

"The people who were caring for us have run away themselves, we have no food, no help."

The sudden breakdown of society in the country of 16 million has created conditions for the virus to spread even if a truce has stopped most of the fighting between President Laurent Gbagbo's loyalists and rebel fighters.

"The crisis makes the young and women particularly vulnerable," said Mpele.

"The health infrastructure is gone in some areas, there is violence, there is an increased likelihood of rape and the behavior of young people has changed because of the war and has put them at greater risk."

INFECTION NOT A CONCERN FOR MANY

Infection with a virus that could lie dormant for years is not a major concern for people worried about where their next meal is coming from or for fighters fearing that battle might resume at any time.

In Bouake, young women hang out at checkpoints with the rebels, now among the few to have spare money in a part of the country where the economy is stuttering to a halt after five months of fighting and peace talks.

From the west of the country, where the army is engaged in sporadic fighting against two rebel factions and allied Liberians, there have been reports of rapes by combatants on both sides.

Meanwhile, more than one million people have been driven from their homes and now find themselves with little means of support, something that aid workers fear will lead to an increase in prostitution.

That mass dislocation threatens to spread the virus not only inside Ivory Coast, but to less-affected neighboring countries like Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso, which suddenly find themselves host to returning migrant workers and refugees.

The lesson from nearby Sierra Leone is a sober one. Before its decade of savage civil war, the HIV infection rate was estimated at below one percent. Now it is thought to be above seven percent in some areas.

"We have the impression here not that we are not going back to zero, but well below zero," said Toure.

By Karin Nordin

STOCKHOLM (Reuters Health) - Drug users throughout Sweden should be offered free syringes by the national health care system, the government's narcotics chief Bjrn Fries has recommended.

As part of a government review of two long-term pilot schemes in the cities of Malm and Lund, Fries was asked to make recommendations on wider implementation.

For nearly 20 years, drug addicts in the two cities have been offered free syringes in exchange for used ones, in addition to HIV tests, vaccinations for hepatitis and counseling.

"The syringe exchange program has been controversial since it started," Fries acknowledged in a press conference.

But their potential for reducing the spread of diseases like HIV, and for maintaining health contact with the drug-using population, meant syringe exchange programs should be available to narcotics users across the country, he said.

The schemes should only operate under certain conditions, he advised. Drug users should also be offered detoxification and treatment, HIV testing and counseling to ensure the long-term goal is always to move them toward a life without drugs.

The government is now expected to consider the implication of his recommendations, including issues such as how to finance nation-wide implementation of syringe-exchange programs.

By ELLIOTT SYLVESTER, Associated Press Writer

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - The life expectancy of black people in Cape Town is expected to plunge to an average of 40 years because of the AIDS epidemic.

A study commissioned by Cape Town health officials found that in six years, black life expectancy will plummet by 15 years.

Dr. Ivan Toms, head of the city's health department, said Thursday that while the study dealt only with Cape Town the results indicate life expectancy in the rest of the country would fall to 40 three years faster.

"Effectively we are running about three to four years ahead of the rest of the national position because of our advanced anti-AIDS programs," Toms said.

In a report released this week called "The Impact of HIV/AIDS on the Population of Cape Town" researchers said blacks, who live mostly in informal settlements and townships close to Cape Town's tourism mecca, are currently expected to live to the age of 55.

People of mixed race whose life expectancy is presently 65 are expected to live only till 55 from 2009.

Whites are excluded from the public health sector study as they mainly use private medical facilities.

South Africa has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world with an estimated 4.7 million South Africans — 11 percent of the population — infected.

"We are definitely better off because we have adopted a holistic approach. We have been quick off the mark and lead the country in our care, support and treatment programs for infected people," said Toms.

Last year, health officials distributed 12 million condoms in Cape Town and plan to increase that to 18 million this year.

The report said in 2001, 1,530 adults and 251 children under the age of five died of AIDS-related illnesses in Cape Town and there were 45 new HIV infections a day.

Death from AIDS-related illnesses from 2009 will exceed all other causes of death in South Africa according to Prof. Rob Dorrington of the Department of Actuarial Science at the University of Cape Town.

In sub-Saharan Africa, which has 70 percent of the world's AIDS infections, life spans are even shorter. The joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS — UNAIDS — has pegged life expectancy in Botswana at 29 years by the 2010.

About 19 percent, or 323, 000, of Botswana's 1.7 million people are infected with HIV and 38 percent of its adults are infected — the highest rate in the world.

In Malawi and Mozambique life expectancy is expected to drop to just under 40 years old in 2010 and in Swaziland to 30 years. In Lesotho, it is will be about 33 years and in Zambia it is expected to be 34 years.

Zimbabwe, where the collapse of the agricultural based economy has left thousands on the brink of starvation, the average life span will be 31 years by 2010.