As the heavy burden of Aids around the world continues to grow, the expanding role of business offers a glimmer of hope in a diversifying and intensifying response to the epidemic. The latest figures from UNAids, the United Nations’ specialist Aids advisory agency, are stark. Forty million people globally are living with HIV, 4.3m became newly infected this year, and nearly 3m died. The figures are at an all-time high.

Growing political commitment and government funding has expanded treatment to record levels: at least 1.6m people in the developing world are now on antiretroviral therapy. But its further extension – into poorer and more rural areas – is an ever more uphill struggle, placing fresh burdens on weak health systems as more lives are saved.