Sub-Saharan Africa is currently the area where AIDS is taking the largest toll. Some countries now have around 25% of the working adult population who are HIV-positive, the highest being Botswana with 35.8% (1999 estimate - source World Press Review).
As these people begin to develop full-blown AIDS, they will be unable to work, and require significant medical care. This is likely to cause a collapse of societies and governments in the region, further increasing the suffering and hardship faced. Many governments in the region continued to deny that there was a problem for years, and are only now starting to work towards solutions. Lack of adequate health-care, ignorance towards the disease and its causes, as well as the money to educate and treat are the main reasons that most AIDS deaths occur in Third World countries. Social movements in countries like South Africa, as well as international development agencies such as Oxfam, have insisted that developing countries should be permitted to manufacture cheap copies of patented AIDS medicines, a move generally resisted by the pharmaceutical companies.
Scientific studies have suggested that AIDS spread initially in West Africa, but it is possible that there were several separate "initial sources".
