Botswana's Hope.(fighting aids)(Brief Article)

A sign at the entrance of a freshly painted bungalow near the center of Gaborone says MAKE A NEW START TODAY. And people are getting the message. Every morning there's a line at the door: a prick of the finger, a quick visit with a counselor and within an hour you're on your way again. Plenty leave grim-faced: more than a third of Botswana's adults test positive for HIV--the highest proportion in the world. But "people these days really want to find out," said Joyce Maruping, 23, who left the Voluntary Testing Center smiling one day last week. "I was terrified, but you just have to know."

Alone among governments in the African AIDS hot zone, Botswana has summoned the means and the political will to try to treat every AIDS sufferer who needs life-sustaining retroviral drugs. Three months ago President Festus Mogae surprised his own officials by promising that by the end of the year the government would provide the AIDS drug cocktail to Botswana's 300,000 infected people. As a result, little Botswana (population: 1.5 million) has become the leader in the battle to stem AIDS in Africa. "It's a test case," says Donald de Korte, a former CEO of Merck Industries in South Africa who leads a $100 million program, funded by Merck and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to launch the drug-treatment program. "If this works, it can be a model for other countries in Africa."

Staggering as the problem may be, Botswana already had an edge in fighting AIDS. It has prospered on revenues from diamonds and cattle and now has $7 billion in foreign reserves, the world's highest per capita. Democracy functions smoothly and relatively graft-free. The health-care system is the envy of the region; in the early 1990s, the average life expectancy rose to almost 70 years. Secure in power, Botswana's political class broke the traditional taboo against openly discussing sexual matters. Its pro-business leaders have worked with foreign multinationals. President Mogae has made AIDS his top priority; now drug prices have plummeted, bringing the cost of the nationwide program down to about $3 per person per day. That all stands in sharp contrast to South Africa, where President Thabo Mbeki this year questioned the link ...