As anyone living with HIV will tell you, there are days when it seems like you think of nothing else. Starting with just that "how do I feel today" thought when setting foot to floor first thing in the morning, not to mention bearing witness to the ways in which people choose to stigmatize others, cursing people to make themselves feel better or score political points.

But then there are stories like this hopeful couple in Zambia, part of a series the BBC is doing tracking the promises the eight richest nations in the world made last year, seeing how those billions trickle down to people living with HIV. Both husband and wife are HIV positive and they work to improve the lives of people with HIV, hoping one day to have their own child.

"I and my wife Matildah want to see a change in Zambia, whereby people don't look at those with HIV as different," says Solomon, 38, from the living room of the house he built himself.

"You can still live a better life so long as you accept your life, so long as you accept your (HIV) status."

Infection rates in Zambia are often in the 16 to 22 percent range in some areas, and in their mostly rural area, formerly a copper mining community, it is clear that the question is an economic one.

"The majority of our youth are engaged in the sex business," says Solomon. "Our economy has stalled, we are really going backwards. When I look at the number of street kids, when I look at the number of orphans, it's really bad for our economy."

That of course is why many in the developed world are finally paying attention to AIDS, because of economic issues, but ironically as evidenced in the quote above, still too often fail to see the role that economic policies play in contributing to the poverty that fosters the disease. Poverty is the real moral crisis, not the disease. Its still easier for ideologues to talk about the disease as evidence of individual moral failure, as opposed to the collective moral failure of the developed world.

An editorial writer, also in Zambia, characterizes the problem this way, "We rather seem to enjoy tackling problems when they are out of control, rather than take measures to ensure that they don't arise at all."

Unfortunately, that statement is not just true in Zambia.