Uganda, Dec. 1 -- It is now 40 years since the strange disease that was killing fishermen in Kasensero, a fishing village in Rakai on the shores of Lake Victoria, was confirmed to be Aids, the end-stage condition brought about by HIV. The carnage that would follow over the next two decades was astonishing. Entire families were wiped out and villages shorn of adults. Almost overnight, Uganda came to have the highest proportion of child-headed households in the entire world, and one of the biggest number of orphans.

It wasn't just the number of those who died; it was how they died. The disease attacked with an unseen ferocity, taking patients into its vice-like grip and squeezing the life out of them. The new disease respected neither age ...