Zimbabwe: Fear, social change drive down HIV rates

Fear of infection and mass social change have driven a huge decline in HIV rates in Zimbabwe, offering important lessons on how to fight the Aids pandemic in the rest of Africa, scientists said on Tuesday (08 February). In a study in the journal PLoS Medicine, British researchers said Zimbabwe's pandemic was one of the biggest in the world until the rate of people infected with HIV almost halved, from 29 per cent of the population in 1997 to 16 per cent in 2007.