As far as I can tell it is primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/...
And there's an interesting juxtaposition with another front-page submission. From this article:
> Alexander, 64, was born into India’s elite. His father, PC Alexander, was principal secretary to Indira Gandhi. In leaving his career as senior director in the India office of McKinsey & Company to join the campaign to stop the spread of HIV, Alexander swapped a life of plush boardrooms and fine dining with CEOs for sitting on mud floors with sex workers, gay and transgender people and intravenous drug users. In short, a world of which he had little knowledge.
The other one criticizes McKinsey & Company: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18691413
Again while the effort expended is commendable I find it hard to believe that this program which by it's own admission catered to a peak of appx. 0.02% of the population single handedly prevented an Aids epidemic
Like GP said, this is a book review, not a scholarly article. It doesn't have citations because book reviews rarely do. It is reasonable to expect a book to have those citations, and presumably this book does.
> catered to a peak of appx. 0.02% of the population
I'm not sure if you understand that sex workers make up a disproportionate share of the population that has sex with multiple people, at least in India. Not only that, the prevalence of condom usage among sex workers (and the population in general) was low at that time. This led to a high share of sex workers suffering from HIV and then transmitting that to folks who would in turn transmit it to their long term partners.
Of course a lot of money was spent on campaigns for the general population too ("Puli Raja ki Aids vastunda?"), but it made a lot of sense to target this program at sex workers.
Surely you mean sex workers and their clients right?
> The programme, which cost $375m (£297m), is credited with an important role in the subsequent decline in India’s HIV status.
Why passive voice here? What authority credited the organization’s work in this way?
On a closer read, it becomes obvious that there are no primary or secondary sources quoted except the author of this book and anecdotes presented therein; essentially, this is no more than a book review. Is there a larger story here? Are there any suggestions or criticisms that suggest this may not be an optimal approach?
As submarines [0] go, this is a pretty harmless and feel-good one. But keep an eye out for articles with similar structure that seek to shape your opinions.
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html