Uganda, in the middle of the sub-Saharan AIDS plague, may be the closest thing to an African success story against the disease. It's a success born of a relentless sex education campaign led personally by President Museveni: a campaign of open talk, free condoms, and militant inclusion of the churches, Muslim and Christian, in the public health offensive.
Success is relative, of course, and Uganda's is a victory that many other poor third-world societies want desperately to avoid. The AIDS infection rate in Uganda today is something over 8 percent -- four times the rate in Thailand, ten times the rate in India.
But in the African neighborhood, where 70 percent of all the world's AIDS is concentrated, Uganda's good news is that AIDS is down, from 14 percent of the population, while it rages upward past 20 percent in South Africa, past 25 percent in Zimbabwe, past 35 percent in Botswana. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
