A presentation at a UNAIDS research meeting.

In the mid-1990s researchers presented evidence that the HIV-1C infection rate had jumped in one year from 5% to 30% among pregnant women in Francistown Botswana. Later research in Tanzania showed that at least 40% of infected infants in a single population were infected with new HIV recombinations. From its history it is noted that the HIV virus can make quick changes within its own molecular structure resulting in measurable changes in epidemiology. By studying HIV on a molecular level necessary knowledge can be gathered to fight newly emerging resistant forms of the virus. With a virus that evolves so readily transmits so successfully and infects so broadly the need to understand the molecular forces that drive it cannot be emphasized enough.