As December 1 marks World AIDS Day, more lives have been affected by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else on earth. USAID Southern Africa’s teams of technical experts tackle the life-threatening epidemic in the world’s three highest HIV prevalence countries: Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho, as well as in South Africa, the country with the highest number of HIV infected.

Lesotho and Swaziland’s populations are highly impoverished, with large numbers of HIV-infected people and few or no natural resources, according to political and U.N. analysts. Life expectancy has plunged from the 60s in the 1990s to just over 40 in Swaziland and Lesotho. These two countries are generally food insecure, as well.

With funding from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), USAID addresses the needs for high numbers of sick people who need treatment and care, while promoting prevention education and related measures for those who are healthy to stay that way.

Unemployment estimates range from 24 percent to 40 percent in this part of the world. Large segments of people leave their homes to seek seasonal work wherever available on farms or mines. Living away from home can lead people to take risks that they normally wouldn’t.

USAID’s development experts concurrently tackle the widespread poverty that fuels the vulnerability and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). USAID’s Southern Africa Trade Hub encourages job-creating entrepreneurship aimed at stimulating local economic growth. The U.S. Presidential Initiative, FEED THE FUTURE, is supporting the Hub to teach Southern Africans how to improve agriculture production and distribution with higher nutritional value throughout the region.

At all times, preventing HIV from spreading is a vital way of helping Southern Africans at high risk to arrest the threats of AIDS. One breakthrough in 2010 came from expert South African researchers at CAPRISA who conducted a study providing promising evidence that the use of an antiretroviral-based microbicide gel (1% Tenofovir) can significantly reduce the risk of HIV infection in vulnerable women. USAID supports such targeted research, development and dissemination of new technologies with a wide range of government, civil society and private sector groups. The power of such partnerships is helping to improve lives and lower risks of death and devastation caused by AIDS in the disease’s epicentre of Southern Africa.