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Now, the main problem with HIV is its tendency to mutate at an extremely rapid rate. Several times, scientists have isolated specific proteins which HIV requires to spread to other cells in the human body, and designed drugs to combat those specifically (eg AZT). The drugs are very successful, knocking out 99.9~% of the viruses. The problem is the one in one million or billion or whatnot of the multitudes of viruses in your body which have a defective gene for that protein, meaning that the drug will not affect them, and can replicate and retake the body, and futher doses of that drug will have little to no effect. As long as new drugs can be developed to combat the new mutations faster than the mutations can kill a person, HIV can be defeated, but this is a nearly impossible feat.
I had read a few years ago how there were a couple of cases of Nigerian prostitutes who had a natural resistance to the HIV virus, and that scientists were going to do some tests to figure out how this is so. I haven't heard anything about this since.
As far as %age of Africa, I don't have the figures offhand, but I'm pretty sure in some countries it's as high as 33-50%. America and the rest of the world is generally much lower; 1% or less, or at least they were whenever I last read figures on that.
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