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| Regional poverty analysis > April 2001 |
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Communicable diseases and poverty in Southern Africa - Dr Mark Colvin & Dr Brian Sharp
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| 9. Conclusions |
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It is becoming increasingly clear, as demonstrated by the data presented above, that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is a developmental crisis that threatens decades of human and economic improvement in southern Africa. However, the picture is not uniformly bleak as some countries, such as Uganda and Zambia, appear to be gaining a measure of control.
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In the long term, goals such as eradicating poverty, empowering women and protecting human rights will be required in order to remove the threat of AIDS from society. However, in the short to medium term there is a need for high-impact interventions that are designed to reduce the risk of transmitting the virus or the risk of becoming infected. If we fail to implement these short term strategies the result will be an even larger pool of infected people which will itself limit the gains from the longer term structural interventions against vulnerability.
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