Photo Essay

The global HIV/AIDS pandemic is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Worldwide, more than 40 million people are now infected, and each day 14,000 more are added to their ranks. 8,000 people die daily of AIDS. Every 14 seconds, AIDS turns a child into an orphan.

In claiming the lives of societies' most productive populations—adults ages 15 to 45—HIV/AIDS threatens a basic principle of development, that each generation does better than the one before.

According to Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, "While Africa bears the brunt of the disease, Eastern Europe and Central Asia suffer the world's fastest infection rate: as many as 1.8 million people—up from 30,000 to 40,000 in 1998—are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Last year, 250,000 people were infected; worst off are Russia, Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia."

Skepticism that anything can really be done may be the biggest threat to truly scaling up the fight against HIV/AIDS.

One measure, President Bush's five-year, $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, aims to provide treatment to 2 million HIV-infected people, prevent 7 million HIV infections and provide care to 10 million people affected by HIV/AIDS globally, including orphans and vulnerable children.

Above, a child-headed household in Kenya. (Photograph by Karen Ande, courtesy of the Firelight Foundation)

Children at a center for street kids in Zambia. (Photograph © tlmoody, courtesy of the Firelight Foundation)

(Photograph by Karen Ande, courtesy of the Firelight Foundation)

Site visit for the African Research & Medical Foundation (AMREF) programs in Kiberia, Kenya. (Courtesy of the Pfizer Foundation)

Prevention remains the primary strategy to combat HIV/AIDS. (Photograph by Karen Ande; courtesy of the Firelight Foundation)

New mother and baby at a clinic in Thailand. (Photograph by Katherine Kim; courtesy of the Pfizer Foundation)

Henry Ombasa, a KICOSHEP home-based care volunteer, comforts his client living in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya. (Photograph by Karen Ande; courtesy of the Firelight Foundation)

Global Health Fellow Dennis Vargo with healthcare practitioners in Kampala, Uganda hospital. (Courtesy of the Pfizer Foundation)

Pfizer sponsors the HIV/AIDS health center and hospice located in this building in Kampala, Uganda, where Pfizer colleagues administer donated Diflucan and medical treatment. (Photograph by Richard Lord)

"What's needed is a groundswell on the scale of the civil rights movement. But, at the moment, there is no such passion." Former Congressman Ronald V. Dellums (D-CA)

Dellums made that statement in the Village Voice in February 2000. Four years later, the groundswell has yet to materialize. (Photograph by Duane Cramer; courtesy of the Black AIDS Institute)