AIDS in Zambia

Geert vanKesteren

Newsweek Magazine

Zambia, one of the poorest countries in Africa, is ravages by AIDS. The prognosis is horrifying, twenty percent of its nine million inhabitants will die of AIDS in the next ten years, and this is a conservative estimate. It is rumored that one in three Zambians is HIV-positive. AIDS continues to spread quickly through the country vastly due to the culture's negative view on condoms and the rampant prostitution on the streets. Many Zambian men have multiple sex partners outside their marriage.As AIDS ravages the Zambian community killing many of the adults and making funerals a daily occurrence, the children of those adults are left on the streets. The number of children of the streets is quickly escalating into the hundred thousands because the orphanages are packed. These orphanages lack the government funding to accommodate the rapidly rising numbers of children.These orphans in turn continue this devastating cyclical pattern of spreading AIDS through the community. To survive on the streets, many of them turn to prostitution. Prostitutes don't practice safe sex and either become infected from one of their sexual partners or are already infected from birth and continue to pass the disease along to others. Groups such as 'Tasintha' are working now on educating their communities about the danger of AIDS and STD's and the importance of using condoms. But the receptiveness of the community is very slow. On the Way to the Hospital, Zambia, one of Africa's poorest countries, is badly hurt by the AIDS pandemic. A patient on her way to Kaoma hospital by wheelbarrow. Kaoma, Zambia, October 1999.

Geert vanKesteren, "AIDS in Zambia," in POYi Archive, Item #31108, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/31108 (accessed June 18, 2025).