The Relationship between the AIDS Pandemic and State Fragility

Abstract

On 5 June 1981 the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States (US) published its Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report, chronicling for the first time the symptoms amongst a few urban gay men of what was set to become the most deadly plague known to humanity. That was over 25 years ago, and the AIDS pandemic has since then killed around 30 million individuals worldwide. More than 40 million people are currently infected globally; of these, 25 million live in Africa south of the Sahara, making this continent the most infected and worst affected region in the world (UNAIDS, 2006c). According to the global report published by the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) in mid-2006, some data for the proximate Southern African region can be summarized as shown in Table 5.1 (UNAIDS, 2006c, pp. 505–40).