AIDS in Africa: A Long Road Ahead

Michael Gerson witnessed in Ethiopia the great hope that accompanies the availability of AIDS-fighting drugs ["Africa's Ocean of Need," op-ed, Oct. 3]. In Zambia, where our U.S.-funded consortium has supported the provision of lifesaving medication to more than 70,000 adults and children, there is a similar feeling of hope.

Medical wards at the University Teaching Hospital in the capital city of Lusaka, once so overloaded with emaciated AIDS patients that many shared beds or slept on the floor, are now eerily empty. Funeral processions no longer strangle midday traffic.

But there's a rub. It takes eight to 10 years for a newly infected patient to become ill enough to require antiretroviral drugs. These patients comprise a huge and unrelenting queue that extends many years into the future. In Lusaka, where the Zambian government has worked hard to get 35,000 people into treatment since 2004, this queue is still 270,000 patients long.

Steadily over the coming decade, each of these people will need treatment or die without it. Mr. Gerson rightly credited the United States' unprecedented resource investment as a critical first step toward bringing AIDS under control. We have acted morally and compassionately, but we must brace ourselves. There is much more to do, and it's going to be expensive.

JEFFREY S.A. STRINGER

Director, Center for Infectious

Disease Research in Zambia

Lusaka, Zambia