After a long, lonely day on the road, 26 year-old trucker Abednigo Chinoyi stops to relax in one of the bars flanking Highway #1. It's just a matter of moments before a $5 prostitute offers him unprotected sex. "If I sleep with her I will drive as far as Malape, I will get another prostitute, spread my AIDS. In a month I think it's possible to spread AIDS to more than 30 girls." The scene is repeated all along the highway. It's difficult to conceive of a more effective way of propagating this killer disease. In Francistown, the first of the trucker stops, 1 in 4 adults are HIV-positive and 1 in 2 are pregnant women. The local priest looks on helplessly, knowing that poverty, ignorance, and a fatal disregard for fact combine to kill. "They don't like these condoms, some said when they use them they found their stomach expanded." Travelling with the flight of HIV north to Zimbabwe AIDS is killing development. At the Vitafoam factory the cold certainty of epidemic death is forcing them to hire 20 workers to replace just one. In Lusaka, at the end of the road, a macabre procession takes place. The funeral trucks here run on a circuit, coffins and mourners queue-up behind. The utter tragedy for Africa is that the worst is yet to come.

Produced by ABC Australia