America’s role in a world where there have been an estimated 25 million AIDS deaths, 12 million orphans and 33 million currently HIV-infected is defined by praiseworthy investments of time and resources combining scientific expertise and humanitarian relief, but also little-noticed dark shadows. Enormous effort has been spent on AIDS prevention and treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 60 percent of those infected live. About two million people began to receive antiretroviral drugs from 2006 until 2008, saving and transforming many of their lives. But during this same period, five million people became newly infected. So while the introduction of antiretroviral drugs in Africa is widely seen as a life-saving success that needs to be continued and expanded, on the prevention side, the promotion of condom use has largely failed to lower nationwide HIV infection rates approaching and even exceeding 20% of the adult population in several African countries.

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Chapter 10

In addition to the disappointing failures of the “safe sex” strategy in Africa, billions spent on research to find effective vaccines or microbicides, chemicals that women could self-administer vaginally to prevent HIV infection, have also largely failed. The latest hoped-for medical solution being tested is the prophylactic use of antiretroviral drugs, called PrEP, for pre-exposure prophylaxis. A 2007 study of an antiretroviral drug for HIV prevention among young women in Ghana did not show any reductions in HIV infection.  

Now what if someone told you that we already have the equivalent of a vaccine that reduced HIV infection by 80% and that this “vaccine” has already been shown to reduce HIV infections throughout an entire country by two-thirds? You would ask, “Why haven’t we heard about it?” Good question…

The country we are referring to is a small country of 28 million people in eastern Africa. In the 1980s Uganda was a country ravaged by wars and galloping HIV infections. In 1986, after 15 years of civil war, Uganda’s new head of state President Yoweri Museveni decided that his country was faced with a life-or-death threat to its existence.