Yet back at Cotlands in Johannesburg, sun shines in through the squeaky clean windows. The curtains are fresh and the nurses sterilize the baby bottles before their morning feeds. Love, care and good food are not in short supply at Cotlands, as they are not in much of Africa, and still the children die. So while the dissident thinking about AIDS in Africa suggests that a distinctively African approach is required, the active combatting of the disease cannot be put on hold. In Uganda, the methods of President Yoweri Museveni s government could provide a model for the rest of the continent.
Huge billboards line the streets imploring sexually active people to use condoms.
As a result Uganda has seen the levels of infection, which were climbing very fast, stabilize and in some instances decline. There are other bright spots. Truckers through Southern Africa now get sex education and free condoms at their pit stops. Sex workers, a mushrooming economic sector in a global age, are getting down to business as well. In Nairobi s red-light district on Majengo Road, condom use is up from 0.2 per cent in 1985 to 80 per cent today.