New Delhi, Aug. 1 -- RIO DE JANEIRO - Jeff Graham had barely reached the podium when delegates began exchanging glances. The head of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief was presenting at AIDS 2026, the world's largest HIV conference, to an audience of health ministers and researchers drawn from across the continent he was supposed to be addressing. The map of Africa projected behind him had Nigeria positioned in the Sahara. Mozambique, a coastal nation in southeastern Africa, appeared in the Horn. Ivory Coast, on the Atlantic seaboard of West Africa, was placed on the continent's opposite edge. Nearly every label was wrong.

The State Department acknowledged the error on Thursday, calling it an unfortunate error caused by a tea...