A 24-hour news-cycle virus was released from its vial at the annual HIV conference in Atlanta last week with word that a child infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS had been cured. The news spread quickly through media outlets around the world.

Colleagues in Uganda, where I work as an HIV clinician and researcher, asked me a barrage of questions soon after reading about it in local newspapers: "Is there a new cure for HIV?" "Can babies be cured of HIV?" "Is this finally the end of AIDS?"

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