Global Scourge: The AIDS Crisis in the Developing World‪.‬

JIM MEEKS, Staff Writer, Harvard International Review After reading newspaper beadlines and listening to the rhetoric of public bealth officials, politicians, and pharmaceutical companies, the US public appears to have justified optimism: after nearly two decades of annually increasing death counts, AIDS (Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome) appears to be a defeatable disease after all. This year in the United States, deaths from AIDS-related symptoms fell by 44 percent from last year; last year's statistics indicate a 14 percent decrease from the year before. This marks the first two-year decline since the onslaught of the epidemic was observed in the early 1980s.