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JordanFarmer | 5 years ago

Sorry... Trying to understand. Are you saying that all these little kids died of aids? How did they contract it? Most kids are 3 feet tall by age three or four. Also, why so many deaths in 2002? Very effective drugs had been widely available for a long time.

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masklinn|5 years ago

> Most kids are 3 feet tall by age three or four. Also, why so many deaths in 2002? Very effective drugs had been widely available for a long time.

Effective HIV suppression is not cheap, and usually out of reach of developing countries or poor communities such as… pretty much all of sub-saharan africa, where the AIDS pandemic remains essentially unchecked.

According to wikipedia, as of 2016, 8 countries had more than 10% of the population infected and two of them (Swaziland / Eswatini and Lesotho) were above 25%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Africa#/media/File...

Given mother-to-child transmission is somewhere between 15 and 45% without mitigation measures (which are unlikely to be in place in a country where a quarter of the population is infected), we're talking 5~10% of children born infected.