HIV infection and AIDS in the tropics

One decade after the first description of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), the epidemic has become a world-wide public health problem. Infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is now spreading most rapidly among the poorer populations in the industrialised world and in the developing world. It has become the most important cause of death among adults in the major African cities and it absorbs an ever increasing proportion of health care budgets. On a global scale heterosexual intercourse is now the most common mode of transmission of HIV, resulting in a growing problem of transmission of the virus from mother to child. As a result of the AIDS epidemic, the incidence of tuberculosis is rising in virtually all populations. Developing countries face a double, gigantic challenge in an unfavourable economic and political climate: caring for those infected with HIV and preventing new infections.