With massive unemployment among the unskilled, sick workers can be replaced. But AIDS has cut into Africa's thin ranks of the skilled, those with money to travel, attract more partners or pay for sex. A Ugandan businessman remembers bankers, distraught over their illness, carelessly writing unsound loans. One teacher a day dies from AIDS in the Ivory Coast. The World Bank makes dire predictions for African economies.
Prevention offers hope.
But the government is not going to jump into bed with people. Instead, experts say, the epidemic must be traced back to the development issues that create risk. A Malawi study, for example, found that women often become prostitutes because they have no other way to feed their children. Drusilla Menaker is a free-lance journalist based in Cairo, Egypt, and a regular contributor to The Dallas Morning News. This site is best viewed using Netscape 4.0 or IE 4.0.