What South Africa learned from AIDS

IN ALMOST EVERYAIDSHIVAIDSHIVThe EconomistThe Economist Today year of the past two decades more than a third of deaths in South Africa have been -related. Thabo Mbeki, the president from 1999 to 2008, swallowed a crank theory he found online that the human immunodeficiency virus () does not cause , which it does. He delayed life-saving treatment, cutting short hundreds of thousands of lives. The pandemic struck down adults in their productive prime, leaving grandmothers to raise orphans. Today South Africa still has more people infected with than any other country.