This great article in the Washington Post “In Zimbabwe, Fewer Affairs and Less HIV,” details how the rising inflation has lead to such overwhelming poverty that men can’t keep up with multiple girlfriends or wives anymore, the kind of many-pronged sexual relations that often lead to the quick spread of AIDS.

The country has made strides against HIV during eight years of steep recession. Wealthier neighbors such as South Africa and Botswana, meanwhile, have struggled to curb new infections despite much higher levels of development and massive spending on the disease.
…
Its currency tumbled so fast that the money used to buy a new car in 2000 would be worth less than a U.S. penny now.

Many AIDS experts feared this turmoil would worsen an epidemic that already was among the most severe in the world.

Yet in 2005, the U.N. AIDS agency reported that the country had experienced southern Africa’s first major decline in HIV. The drop was clearest among pregnant women who attended prenatal clinics, but studies of other groups showed similar trends.

The most recent nationwide survey, conducted in 2005 and 2006, put Zimbabwe’s HIV rate for adults at 18.1 percent, still higher than in all but five other countries in the world. Researchers believe it peaked a few years earlier at about 25 percent.

This shift came despite Zimbabwe’s pariah status at a time when growing international funding has allowed other African countries to dramatically expand their efforts to combat the epidemic. When President Bush created his $15 billion anti-AIDS program, all of Zimbabwe’s neighbors — South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia — were cited as “focus countries” worthy of extra support.

I pulled the “clinical” information here, but you should read the whole article because the stories the journalist follows of people living in Zimbabwe and cutting down their number of partners because they just can’t afford to take all those girls to dinner is really interesting.

I’ve always wondered about polygamous relationships in the village – how those men supported all those women and children, or I think most of the time, it’s the women and children digging and fetching water to support the men. But I guess it’s different when there’s polygamy in urban areas where the wives and girlfriends are demanding lots of things. Would be hard to manage if your car’s price a few years ago is now only worth a dolllar.