"We're using the wrong word", says Sean Drysdale, a desperate doctor from a rural hospital at Hlabisa in northern KwaZulu-Natal. "This isn't an epidemic, it's a disaster". A recent UNICEF report, which states that almost one-third of Swaziland's 900,000 people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, supports this diagnosis. HIV is spreading faster in southern Africa than anywhere else in the world. But is anyone paying attention? (1) Despite the fact that most of the world's 33.5 million HIV/AIDS cases are in sub-Saharan Africa--with an additional 4 million infected each year--the priorities at last week's Organization of African Unity summit were conflict resolution and economic development. (2) Yet the epidemic could have a greater impact on economic development--or, rather, the lack of it--than many politicians suspect. While business leaders are more concerned about the Y2K millennium bug than the longterm effect of AIDS, statistics show that the workforce in South Africa, for example, is likely to be 20% HIV positive by next year. Medical officials and researchers warn that not a single country in the region has a cohesive government strategy to tackle the crisis.

(3) The way managers address AIDS in the workplace will determine whether their companies survive the first decade of the 21st century, says Deane Moore, an actuary(保险统计家 ) for South Africa's Metropolitarn Life insurance company. Moore estimates that in South Africa there will be 580,000 new AIDS cases a year and a life expectancy of just 38 by 2010. "We'll be back to the Middle Ages," says Drysdale, whose hospital is in one of the areas in South Africa with the highest rates of HIV infection. "The graph is heading toward the vertical. And yet people are still not taking it seriously."

The surging rate of AIDS and the drop in life expectancy have already helped drag down South Africa 13 Places to 101 out of the 174 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's survey of living standards. The U.N.D.P. noted that, at current infection rates, South Africa could lose about 20% of its workforce to AIDS within the next six or seven years.

Many companies in South Africa are already losing 3% of their workforce to the disease, says Alan Whiteside, director of health, economics and HIV/AIDS research at the University of Natal. There are 2.2 million AIDS orphans in southern Africa, he said at a World Economic Forum conference in Durban earlier this month. (4) "In south Africa we talked of a lost generation because of apartheid, but our next lost generation will be due to children orphaned by AIDS. Levels of HIV infection at antenatal (出生前的)clinics are "truly horrendous," says Whiteside--they're now 22.8%. Even more serious is the rapid increase in the disease among girls aged 15 to 19, a trend indicating that AIDS prevention programs are having little effect.

Most southern African countries are simply too poor to supply more than basic health services, let alone medicines, to confront the crisis. Patients in some government hospitals in Harare have to supply their own bedding, food, drugs and, in some cases, even their own nurses (5) Zimbabwe's flail domestic economy depends to a large extent on informal enterprises and small businesses, many of which are imploding as AIDS takes its toll on owners and employees. "The ripple effect is devastating," says Harare AIDS researcher Renee Loweuson.

参考答案　

1.尽管世界上3350万艾滋病病毒携带者／患者中的大多数人都生活在非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区——每年还有另外400万人感染艾滋病病毒，但上周召开的非洲统一组织首脑会议的主要议题却仍是解决冲突和发展经济。
2.然而这一流行病对于经济发展，或者更确切地说对于经济发展目前所缺乏的因素产生的影响比许多政治家想像的更大。
3.南非大都市人寿保险公司保险统计员迪恩莫尔认为，管理人员在工作场所如何对待艾滋病将决定他们的公司在21世纪的头几年能否继续存在。
4.在南非，囚种族隔离我们有过失落的一代，新的失落的一代将是因艾滋病而变为孤儿的一代。
5.津巴布韦薄弱的国民经济在很大程度上依赖于非正式企业和小型商业，而随着艾滋病夺去雇主和雇员的生命，许多企业都自身难保。

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