Public Health Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide

The AIDS epidemic sweeps through developing countries

With her large, dark eyes and thick, waist-length hair, the 18-year-old was a favorite among the truck drivers who called at the squalid brothel on Highway 45 in Ulundurpet, a small town in southern India. When she was placed in a ) reformatory for convicted prostitutes in June, five men offered to bail her out. Today she is emaciated, weighing only 62 lbs., her hair is falling out, and she is showing unmistakable signs of mental derangement. The source of the woman's suffering: the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, virus. Doctors at the home want to delay her release, fearing that...

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