The Strategic Role of Water in Alleviating the Human Tragedy Associated with HIV/AIDS in Africa

Abstract

The continuing HIV/AIDS pandemic across sub-Saharan Africa has had an enormous impact on societies, and the number of people dying from AIDS-related diseases has reached truly alarming levels in several countries. The series of adverse impacts appears likely to continue – especially in southern Africa – where HIV prevalence rates have reached heights seen nowhere else in the world, and little evidence is available to suggest that national prevalence rates have declined in real terms (Van Dyk, 2001; Walker et al. 2004; Marais, 2005; UNAIDS, 2006a). The situation has been worsened in recent months by the emergence of a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, one of the opportunistic diseases of HIV/AIDS, which has now placed an increased health burden on people in southern Africa.