I’m in a great rage now, as I understand how many lives we have lost.

I learned later, just as a footnote, that the World Assembly of Youth was a CIA front.

But I don’t want to leave until I see the breakthrough.

It is always the village women who drive these things.

One is that if women’s sexuality in Africa wasn’t under assault, if women were able to say no, if women weren’t subject to predatory attacks by men, or predatory behaviour generally, then you would have a disease in Africa called AIDS. But you wouldn’t have a pandemic.

Young women, adolescent girls, are more subject to infection, sometimes at a rate of six times that of boys. That tells you a lot about the vulnerability of women.

I’m in a great rage now, as I understand how many lives we have lost.

The United Nations has a lot of capacity on the ground.

I’m still at the end of my rope because I find myself not handling things well when I travel.

The pandemic of AIDS is a gender-based disease.

I think when you’ve travelled around a lot in Africa, you understand something that many people here don’t recognize: the extraordinary power that is Africa at village level – at community level.

Men haven’t changed their behaviour, so women somehow have to be strengthened to be able to ward off the men.

It gives one hope, this great strength of Africa.

Unless there is recognition that women are most vulnerable… and you do something about social and cultural equality for women, you’re never going to defeat this pandemic.

All I know is that every time I go to Africa, I am shaken to my core.

I was working for the Socialist International, after I left university in 1959, as a researcher.