To end AIDS, high-risk countries will need to jab schoolgirls

Two decadesHIVAIDShiv ago was ripping across Africa like flames across a lake of petrol. In some countries more than a quarter of adults were infected. Nearly all were expected to die, slowly, leaving families without breadwinners and forcing girls to drop out of school to care for sick parents. Sober observers predicted social collapse. But then the price of antiretroviral drugs plunged: pills that not only kept people alive but made them less infectious. By a conservative estimate, they saved 21m lives.Why, then, is still the top cause of death for African women and number three for women aged 15-49 worldwide? The answer is that, although 30m people with are taking the pills, 9m are not. Those who do not know they have the virus can easily pass it on: 1.3m people were freshly infected last year and 630,000 died of the disease, which ravages the immune system.