AIDS: In the Grip Of the Scourge

Deaths in Africa reach 5,000, and millions more are at risk

"Oh, what will happen in this world if we have to die when we make love? AIDS is the century's evil." That lament, from a pop ballad that is sweeping west Africa, probably seems overdrawn to most Americans. Not so for Josephine Najingo, a 28-year-old mother of five who lives in the dusty Ugandan trading center of Kyotera, near the Tanzanian border. For her, the lyrics describe a bitter reality. Josephine is dying because she had sexual intercourse with her late husband. A prosperous trader, he had contracted "slim disease," a painful wasting away of body tissues by uncontrolled weight loss,...

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