As you are reading this, HIV is sweeping across the southern half of the African continent without mercy and without prejudice. 17 million people have already died of AIDS or AIDS related diseases and it is estimated that another 25 million will follow.

As corpses scar the landscape, silence rules - the silence of the Africans afraid to accept or even whisper the "word unspoken" and the silence of the developed world, who tentatively acknowledge the problem and pay mere lip-service to searching for a solution. While "civilized" society readily displays a caring face to the problem of combating HIV/AIDS in the West, when considering the southern half of Africa it is so easy to pretend it is someone else's problem. But the horror of children dying by the millions through the "sins" of their parents and the complacency of world society is in reality everyone's problem.