HIV/AIDS has had a devastating impact in many African countries. In Botswana, life expectancy has dropped to just 39 years due to the high HIV prevalence rate of nearly 39%. The loss of many working-age adults threatens Botswana's economy. However, Brazil has had success in combating HIV/AIDS through prevention campaigns, free treatment programs, and producing generic antiretroviral drugs. Brazil is now helping other African countries like Botswana by sharing its expertise and experience.

1. Infectious Diseases HIV/AIDS

2. ‘Healthy life expectancy in some African countries is dropping back to levels we haven’t seen since Medieval times ’, says the Coordinator of the WHO statistics team. According to the WHO, life expectancy in several African countries in southern Africa is now 15-20 years lower than it would have been without HIV. Aids killed 2.1mn Africans in 2006.

3. Key Dates First appeared in Central Africa in 1959. 1979 came to general notice when gay men in the USA & heterosexuals in Tanzania & Haiti began to develop symptoms. The term Aids first used in 1981. 1983 Institut Pasteur, France isolated HIV. 1997 – Deaths in in USA fell for 1st time. Total number worldwide infections had risen to 22mn, with 6.4mn deaths. *2006 – 40mn infections worldwide, 60% Sub-Saharan Africa. 20% cases in S & SE Asia.

4. Oceania 81,000 Caribbean 250,000 140,000 65,000 Latin America 1.7mn 860,000 590,000 S & SE Asia 7.8mn 2.8mn 2.1mn Sub – Saharan Africa 24.7mn New Infections Deaths Total Infections

5. Problems with statistics Medical records are confidential. Many people are unaware they are infected. Social stigma leans many do not report the illness. AIDS not always given as the cause of death, as the suffer usually dies of another disease – pneumonia.

7. What factors have helped the spread of the epidemic? Mobile population, many men working away from home – down mines, on farms or driving lorries. Lack of education about sex & hygiene. Problems distributing & affording condoms. Plus men reluctant to use them. Taboo about discussing sex. Tradition of older men initiating younger girls into sex.

8. Why do many die? Lack of affordable drugs Late treatment, as people reluctant to be tested. Poverty – poor diet and thus cannot fight viruses lightly catch when immune system damaged. Poor living conditions more likely to catch TB.

9. Why is Aids/HIV so damaging to the economy? Strikes mature adults, when would be most productive. Strikes all people, which means a waste of investment in education & training. Many children become orphans and cannot afford education, reducing value in workforce.

10. Management Aids activists in S. Africa work to get better treatment, to publicise and to reduce the stigma of disease. www.worldaidscampaign.org Trying to find a vaccine. Prolonging life through drugs. Plotting the course to try to predict future spread of the disease. Education & advertising Caring for victims & families – Terrance Higgins Trust and London Lighthouse in the UK.

11. Economy - Botswana In Botswana has maintained one of the world's highest economic growth rates since independence in 1966. Through fiscal discipline and sound management, Botswana has transformed itself from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income country with a per capita GDP of $10,000 in 2005. Two major investment services rank Botswana as the best credit risk in Africa. Diamond mining has fuelled much of the expansion and currently accounts for more than one-third of GDP and for 70-80% of export earnings. Tourism, financial services, subsistence farming, and cattle raising are other key sectors. HIV/AIDS infection rates are the second highest in the world and threaten Botswana's impressive economic gains.

12. Almost 39 million people around the world are living with HIV – slightly more than the population of Poland. Nearly two-thirds of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. The global HIV/Aids epidemic killed 2.8 million people in 2005.

14. Botswana faces ‘extinction’ if the efforts to control are not effective The countries hit hardest by Aids, Zimbabwe and Botswana, have seen life-expectancy drop by nearly half in 15 years, when it should have been rising. Children born in 2000 in Botswana, where nearly 39% of the population are HIV positive, will live, on average, to just 39.

15. The light bars show how Botswana’s population structure is expected to look in 2020, taking the country's HIV epidemic into account. The dark bars show how it would otherwise look. The loss of a huge swathe of work-age adults will hit families and the economy alike.

16. At least 15 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to Aids – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The total is expected to be close to 25 million by 2010. Many orphans alive today will themselves die of Aids. Many of those who survive will have to care for younger siblings.

17. At least half the economies in sub-Saharan Africa have shrunk because of HIV. As workers die, their skills and knowledge are lost. Productivity drops while welfare costs for the sick and orphaned spiral. The proportion of the workforces of South Africa and Mozambique lost to Aids is expected to more than double between 2005 and 2020.

18. Why has Brazil been so successful? But Brazil's HIV prevalence rate is 0.7% Brazil developed an internationally renowned Aids programme, which today provides free treatment to about 125,000 people, more than any other country in the developing world. A further 300,000 people are constantly having their HIV levels monitored. According to UNAids, one third of people with HIV in developing countries who receive satisfactory treatment live in Brazil. The number of deaths from the disease has dropped by 80% in recent years in Brazil. The government thinks that is a significant achievement, considering that the World Bank predicted in 1992, that, by 2002, 1.2 million Brazilians would be HIV positive. For UNAids, the success of the Brazilian programme is due to investment in prevention campaigns (among young people and sex professionals, in particular); the production of generic antiretroviral drugs and also the mobilisation of civilians in pressuring the government to adopt new policies, as well as working with the public sector.

19. Managment Recent research showed that about 900 NGOs work with the Aids programme in Brazil. The NGOs also work in the favelas, or slums, teaching mainly youngsters how to use a condom and also promoting events like plays where the children act as "information spreaders" - using the plays to teach the other children in their community. Prevention campaigns are mainly produced by the government, using TV, newspapers, radios and the local community centres (as local public clinics) to spread the message. A villa outside Sao Paulo has been turned into a set for a pornographic movie by the Brazilian company, Sexxxy videos. But the company is also the latest recruit in the fight against Aids. These films, condoms are standard props. The company is also shooting a special message about Aids to put at the start of each of its videos - something that the Brazilian congress will soon make compulsory for all adult movies. Brazil says it plans to distribute a billion free condoms next year as part of its fight against HIV and Aids. The country's Health Minister, Saraiva Felipe, said the programme would be helped by the construction of a state-run condom factory.

20. How is Brazil helping Botswana? Brazilian journalists also produce a TV programme in Botswana with documentaries and live discussions on the subject, and the country has also announced that it will set up a factory in Mozambique to produce cheaper anti-retroviral drugs.