In a country with 930,000 people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), that barely counts as a start. Nevertheless, until a year ago the idea of bringing the best AIDS treatment in the world to an impoverished nation in sub-Saharan Africa was inconceivable.

The meeting comes two years after a similar gathering in Vancouver heralded the first significant breakthrough in HIV treatment -- the use of three-drug combinations of antivirals to suppress the infection into quiescence. The continued success of that strategy, as well as its failures and its unanticipated side effects, is expected to be a major focus of the meeting.

A report released last week by (Peter) Piot's organization estimated the number of HIV infections worldwide to be 30.6 million. About 5.8 million of those were acquired in the last year. Since the start of the epidemic, 11.7 million people have died of AIDS, 2.3 million of them in 1997. In the last three years, 27 countries have seen their HIV infection rates more than double. In parts of the former Soviet Union, where intravenous drug use is powering a small but rapidly growing epidemic, rates have risen sixfold.