Pulitzer Prize-winning series by Mark Schoofs
As the death toll from AIDS recedes in America, Africa is reeling from an epidemic of Biblical proportions. South of the Sahara, AIDS is worse than anywhere else in the world, and this catastrophe is transforming the continent forever.
This series explores AIDS in Africa. Based on hundreds of interviews conducted in nine countries over six months, the series covers the social, biological, and human ramifications of HIV: the deadly consequences of denial, the heroic response of some African communities, the origin and future of HIV, the corrosive effects of racism and colonialism, the role of women in the spread and prevention of HIV, the grim options for treatment, and the hope for a vaccine.
In this pandemic, no nation is an island. AIDS has already fueled a global resurgence of tuberculosis, and by weakening the body's ability to fend off pathogens, HIV gives new and emerging microbes a golden opportunity to adapt to the human species. AIDS has not yet run its course.
| "Villagers here
are so poor that most don't bury their dead in coffins, but
merely wrap them in blankets. At one funeral, near the start
of Zimbabwe's winter, the grieving family was so destitute
that, after lowering the body into the grave, they started
removing the blanket from the corpse so their children
wouldn't go cold." (From Part 3: Africa Responds)  Anna Adhiambo (left) and her mother-in-law Consolata Atieno: Anna was kicked out of her home when she left her husband's cousin, who had "inherited" her. (photo: Mark Schoofs) "I wrote AIDS on a death certificate and then crossed it out. I thought, 'I'll just be stigmatizing this person, because no one else puts AIDS as the cause of death, even when that's what it is' " --an anonymous high-ranking Zimbabwean physician. (From Part 1: The Virus Creates a Generation of Orphans) |
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