By Following UNAIDS' Advice, Angola's HIV Epidemic Should Rocket

Following a recent posting about the risk of HIV and other blood borne diseases being spread in beauty salons and barber shops in the country of Georgia, here's another one about the same issue in Angola.

Even in Angolas capital, Luanda, many establishments lack sterilizing equipment. Beauty and hairdressing processes sometimes carry the risk of breaking the skin, especially where an area of skin is already damaged. If an infected area is involved, the risk of transmitting HIV is particularly high. Pus is a lot more risky than blood.

The articles don't mention additional risks from things like body piercing and tattooing, though these involve, by definition, breaking the skin. The Angola Aids Institute has pointed out that it is the establishment owners' responsibility to provide equipment and other materials. But it is the employees who need the training.

Anyhow, it's good to have the issue aired. Here in East Africa, a lot of hairdressing, cosmetic treatment, manicure and pedicure takes place on the street and in people's homes, often carried out by ill-equipped and untrained people. And people appear to be entirely unaware of the risks. They point to the small bottle of surgical spirit and cotton wool which they use, to a greater or lesser extent.

If those providing the treatment are unaware of the risks, their customers are even less aware. Worse still, official warnings from UNAIDS and the like about HIV are almost entirely about sexual risks, with non-sexual risks either diminshed, ignored or denied.

Angola borders some of the highest prevalence countries in the world but HIV prevalence there is not even as high as it is in East African countries. This is, even by UNAIDS, accepted as relating to the long civil war there. War is said to keep many parts of a country isolated.

What UNAIDS don't say is that war can also reduce the use of beauty and hairdressing establishments, even the provision of such services. And the august and over-financed institution is even less likely to point out that during long civil wars, over 25 years in Angola's case, health services tend to break down. These factors might significantly reduce the risk of non-sexual HIV transmission.

'Unsafe' sexual behavior was likely to have been far more common during the civil war than since. At least, it's unlikely to have been less common. It is only now that the civil war has ended that people, especially children, are receiving information about sex and HIV. Yet, ironically, it is now that the war has ended that HIV prevalence is rocketing.

Unfortunately, the usual suspects, political, religious, scientific, etc, are rushing to Angola to wag their collective fingers about safe sex. These groups are unlikely to have any impact on HIV transmission. So it's reassuring to hear news from Angola about non-sexual transmission. Let's hope they include unsafe medical practices in their warnings.

Almost all HIV transmission in Angola could have been prevented. There were people warning about non-sexual transmission in the early 2000s, even in the 1990s. But the HIV agenda has long been hijacked by those obsessed by sex, especially sex in Africa. If Angolans don't see the error of global HIV policy and go their own way, they will end up like all the other countries 'guided' by UNAIDS and their ilk.

HIV Transmission Takes Many Forms, So Let's Not Concentrate on Just One

In the US and many other Western countries the number one way of becoming infected with HIV is through anal sex, usually men having sex with men (MSM). The number two way is intravenous drug use. Other modes of transmission are in need of elucidation but we are told they include penile-vaginal heterosexual sex.

Many people, when asked to guess, think that penile-vaginal heterosexual transmission is very common. They are not aware that it is an inefficient mode of transmission, especially compared to anal sex (between men or between men and women) and intravenous drug use.

In some African countries, HIV transmission is said to be predominantly through penile-vaginal heterosexual sex. Intravenous drug use may well be low in a lot of high prevalence African countries. Exactly why male/male or male/female anal sex should be relatively rare or should rarely transmit HIV in African countries has never been made clear by the HIV industry.

But because of the insistance on harping on about penile-vaginal (usually just by implication) heterosexual sex, very little attention is given to any other modes of transmission. And non-sexual modes of transmission, such as unsafe healthcare, unsafe cosmetic practices or anything else, are barely mentioned and are claimed to be almost non-existent if mentioned at all.

So it's not surprising that there is a lot of misunderstanding about anal sex (as well as HIV and sexual transmission in general). People in African countries in particular are usually unaware that anal sex carries a risk of transmitting HIV, or even sexually transmitted infections, let alone the fact that it carries a far higher risk than other forms of sexual intercourse.

The risk may be as much as 18 times higher. That makes it very risky indeed. But, for some reason, the HIV industry has pinned their hopes on targeting penile-vaginal heterosexual sex, almost exclusively. And it's not working. Whether the industry lies or simply doesn't bother to tell the true story, many people are taking risks, getting infected, suffering and dying, completely unnecessarily.

What is so difficult, or even wrong, with telling people the full story? HIV is transmitted in many different ways. Some of those modes of transmission are efficient, such as anal sex, intravenous drug use, unsafe medical and cosmetic practices; and some are not efficient, such as penile-vaginal heterosexual sex. Even sex work is not particularly risky in Western countries, only in African countries, it seems.

To tell people only the bit you want them to hear, for example, about penile-vaginal heterosexual sex alone, is to fail to educate them. They do not get an understanding about how HIV is transmitted. Therefore they remain in the dark about how to protect themselves. The behavioral paradigm, the view that HIV is almost always transmitted through penile-vaginal sex in African countries is a fallacy. And it's killing people.