Tag Archives: Botswana

Botswana has been getting a lot of calls lately from across the African continent, prodding the nation — once “at risk of extinction” from HIV — to tell the world how they did the impossible: squash childhood HIV rates. The number of children living with HIV has declined sharply everywhere, but nowhere more so than in Botswana, which has managed …

At the turn of the century, HIV was so rampant in Botswana that politicians and doctors viewed it as an existential threat. One in eight infants were reported to be infected at birth, while rates of mother to child transmission either through pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding ranged from between 20 and 40%, according to UNAIDS. Between 1990 and 2000, mortality …