Africa continues to be a focal point of concern regarding the spread of HIV, the AIDS virus; UNAID announced one of the gloomiest forecasts since the virus was first discovered in 1981. In the first country-by-country analysis of the disease, the United Nations said that in 1998 30 million people worldwide were infected with HIV, and that 21 million of these were in Africa.

AIDS in Africa rivals the epidemics ofthe Black Death in the Middle Ages and the influenza pandemic in 1918-1919 (both killing 20 million people). Infection rates exceed one in three adults in some major African cities.

However,...