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National Geographic : 2002 Feb
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pointed toward increased low-cost availability of AIDS drugs in other developing nations. While drug therapy results are promising, the use of protease inhibitors and other antivirals, such as AZT, can produce grave side effects that include nausea, bone loss, diabetes, liver dam age, raised cholesterol levels, and depression. And doctors do not yet understand why HIV drugs rearrange fat in the body. The face be comes sunken and the limbs wizened while fat piles up elsewhere. To see the bulging belly and the humped back of a patient who has taken antivirals for several years only underscores the need to find another way to inhibit HIV. "Historically vaccines are the only way to stop an epidemic," said Dr. Peggy Johnston, assistant director for AIDS vaccines at NIH. "But while a vaccine used as a public health tool might slow an epidemic or prevent one from starting, so far vaccines have not helped sick people." Lusaka, Zambia, is a city where the worst case AIDS scenario is coming true-HIV has infected one in three adults. There I met Evans Ganzini Banda, a clean-cut Zambian in his late 20s. Not long ago Banda became one of 650,000 people to have lost both parents to AIDS in this country where, like many countries in sub Saharan Africa, widespread prostitution and multiple sexual partners are common. Faced with the expense of supporting five sisters, Banda founded a newspaper called NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, FEBRUARY 2002
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