It's not Condoms that are Failing to Protect Against HIV, it's UNAIDS

[Cross posted from the Don't Get Stuck With HIV blog.]

At the beginning of this month, David Gisselquist took a careful look at UNAIDS' 'Modes of Transmission' model and found it seriously lacking, grossly overestimating HIV transmission among couples in long term relationships in Malawi. As a result of this flaw, the model gives results which appear to support the extremely racist view that most Africans in high HIV prevalence countries, male and female, engage in a lot of unsafe sex, and mainly sex with people other than their partners.

David shows how the Modes of Transmission model currently estimates that 81% of Malawi's 95,000 new HIV infections were accounted for by spousal transmission. If you remove the flaw, the percentage goes down to 20%, leaving 60% of all infections unaccounted for by the model (non-sexual transmissions from mother to child make up much of the remainder). How were all those other people infected, including the women who are said to have infected their babies?

It is very likely that a substantial number of HIV infections in Malawi and other high prevalence countries are a result of non-sexual transmission, such as through unsafe healthcare, cosmetic procedures and traditional practices. The much lauded 'ABC' (Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms) approach to HIV prevention does not work, not because many Africans actually live up to the stereotypical 'all men are bastards, all women are hapless victims', but because HIV is not always transmitted through heterosexual sex.

Consider condoms, which are a great technology for reducing unplanned pregnancies, many sexually transmitted infections and sexually transmitted HIV, through anal and vaginal intercourse. But a number of surveys have found that HIV prevalence is very high among those who use condoms. Indeed, prevalence is often higher among those who at least sometimes use condoms than among those who never use them. The following chart is from the relevant Demographic and Health Survey for four countries.

In some cases, HIV prevalence is 50% higher among those who sometimes use condoms than among those who never use them, sometimes 100%. Shocking? Only if you think HIV transmission in high prevalence African countries is all about sex. Consider another set of figures, this time for condom use at last sexual intercourse in past 12 months. The figures for those who have not had sex in the past 12 months also raise questions (data from DHS surveys). You could suggest that people are not honest, or that people who are infected are 'abstaining', but it is far more vital to figure out exactly how people are being infected in order to prevent further infections.

Why are HIV prevalence figures so much higher among people who say they sometimes use condoms? I can only tell you what I think; condom use is completely irrelevant to non-sexually transmitted HIV. That sounds obvious, but UNAIDS insist that almost all transmission is through heterosexual sex, yet they stand by figures like these. It is not possible for HIV prevalence to be so much lower among those who never use condoms if almost all HIV transmission is sexual. But there may be an explanation for why those who sometimes use condoms seem so much more likely to be infected.

HIV prevalence is often highest among wealthier, urban dwelling, employed, female, better educated people who live in wealthier countries that have reasonable access to reproductive healthcare services, a relatively low population density and sometimes a higher urban population (but not always). People who answer that description, people who can tick at least some of those boxes (some of the factors are interdependent), it seems, are also more likely to use condoms.

So it is not a case of people with the above characteristics using condoms, yet still being more likely to be infected with HIV, but rather a case of those same people being more likely to be infected with HIV through unsafe healthcare or some other non-sexual route. Once you challenge the sexual behavior paradigm the rest is clear: condoms are irrelevant to non-sexual HIV transmission. It only sounds unintuitive if you keep clinging to the sexist, racist and extremely dangerous reflex about sexual behavior, so beloved by UNAIDS, WHO, CDC, PEPFAR, the Gates Foundation and various universities that have been prominent in the HIV industry.

Given what we so often hear about HIV being inextricably linked with poverty, unemployment, lack of education, isolation, poor access to health services, etc, it is worth emphasizing that the virus may often be more closely linked to the opposite of these factors. Of course, all of these factors are abhorrent and it should be the aim of every wealthy country to ensure that such conditions are alleviated. But if HIV is being transmitted through unsafe healthcare and other routes, all healthcare development must be SAFE healthcare, all HIV education must include information about non-sexual transmission, all employment 

and environments must exclude risks of bloodborne transmission of HIV, as much as possible.

So first we need to recognize that HIV is not solely transmitted through 'unsafe' sex and that it can be transmitted, perhaps far more easily, through unsafe healthcare, cosmetic procedures and traditional practices. ABC 'strategies' do not work because HIV transmission is not all about sex, not because Africans are too careless, promiscuous or ignorant (or even 'disempowered') to follow its patronizing advice. Safe sex has its place, but safe healthcare is a far more urgent issue in high HIV prevalence African countries right now. It's not condoms that are failing to protect people against HIV, but the intransigence of UNAIDS and the rest of the HIV industry.

WHO Supports Circumcision Despite What They Know About Injection Safety in Africa?

[Cross posted from the Don't Get Stuck With HIV site]

The World Health Organization's (WHO) mass male circumcision page states that the operation reduces risk of HIV transmission from females to males (etc), and that they and UNAIDS recommend circumcision as a strategy for HIV prevention, "particularly in settings with high HIV prevalence and low levels of male circumcision". The claimed maximization of "public health benefit" raises many questions, about compatibility with their current victim blaming and individual responsibility strategy, and also about what can be done in areas with high rates of circumcision and high rates of HIV prevalence (or do they have a policy on foreskin reconstruction?).

But the question I'd like to concentrate on is what WHO means by 'settings'. If it refers to high HIV prevalence countries, then they must be aware that most HIV epidemics do not follow national or other geographical or political boundaries. Malawi, as mentioned in a previous blog, can be divided into three clusters, two clusters of low HIV prevalence and one of high prevalence. Only the high prevalence cluster has high rates of circumcision. Rwanda, similarly, has three clusters, two of low prevalence and one of high prevalence. Burundi has only one cluster, and that's the capital city, where most of the country's HIV positive people reside.

Indeed, high HIV prevalence tends to cluster in cities in most African countries, yet the vast majority of people in most high prevalence countries live in rural areas, where prevalence is often low, sometimes very low. So WHO aims to target up to 80% of males, when most of them can not be said in any useful sense to live in 'high HIV prevalence settings'. Although HIV epidemics are heterogenous, within as well as between countries, if high prevalence settings refer to anything at all they refer to areas where access to healthcare facilities is high and levels of safety in healthcare facilities are low (for example).

It gets worse because if you look at Burundi and Rwanda's Demographic and Health surveys (just two examples out of many) you will see that HIV prevalence is higher among Muslim men (mostly circumcised) than men of some of the other (often non-circumcising) denominations; prevalence is lower even among uncircumcised Muslims than circumcised Muslims. Other Demographic and Health Surveys show that HIV prevalence is far higher among Muslim women than among women of other denominations, not just higher than among Muslim men. So, not only does circumcision not always protect men from HIV, it may well have something to do with higher rates of transmission from men to women; this at least merits a bit of investigation, doesn't it?

What does this have to do with WHO's (somewhat vague) data on injection safety and healthcare safety, more broadly? Well, in a document on injection safety success stories, the WHO notes that an estimated 25 billion injections are administered annually and that an estimated 70% of them are unnecessary. The report states that "Unsafe practices and the overuse of injections can cause an estimated 32% of Hepatitis B virus, 40% of Hepatitis C virus and 5% of all new HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infections every single year." "At least 50% of injections were unsafe in 14 of 19 countries...for which data were available" according to another WHO report.

We don't know what levels of injection safety are like in WHO 'priority' countries for mass male circumcision programs (Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe). But we may assume, in the absence of data, that high HIV prevalence countries also tend to have higher rates of HIV transmission through unsafe injections. So what is the range of ates? 10%? 20%? The rate would be very low in many Western countries, so it must be fairly high in at least some high HIV prevalence countries to average at 5%. But if we are not told how high rates are, and for which countries, how can 'priority' countries even weigh the benefits against the risks? How can WHO, for that matter (yet they do claim benefits, up to "3.4 million new HIV infections" to be averted by 2025, not forgetting savings of US$16.5 billion)?

The 20 million figure that WHO recommends to be circumcised only refers to medical circumcisions (and it doesn't include children or infants, not yet anyhow), not to all those non-medical circumcisions carried out in unsterile conditions. The number of non-medical circumcisions would be many tens of millions, perhaps even over one hundred million over the course of these mass male circumcision programs (another 11 years to go). What if even just 5% of them were to be infected with HIV through unsafe practices? They won't be receiving injections, presumably, but one would like to think that WHO approved programs would have higher standards of safety than circumcisions performed in unsterile conditions by non-medically qualified people. Alas, it is difficult to estimate rates of HIV infections through unsafe medical and traditional practices because so little effort has ever been made to collect such data.

WHO and UNAIDS are obsessed with sexual behavior, but reluctant to assess non-sexually transmitted HIV, especially via unsafe injections and unsafe healthcare in general. Yet they are willing to promote mass male circumcision programs to reduce HIV transmission when their own figures suggest that the number of people who risk being infected with HIV through these programs is likely to be far higher than even the most outlandish estimates of infections 'averted'. Far from being a 'distraction' from effective HIV prevention, as some have called it, mass male circumcision programs are likely to transmit several times more infections than they could ever hope to avert.

South African National HIV Survey Betrays Those Facing Non-Sexual Risks

The latest South African National HIV Prevalence, Incidence and Behaviour Survey, 2012 was released recently. Much of the media coverage concentrated on things like the worrying increase in HIV prevalence compared to the last survey, which was carried out in 2008, said to be the combined result of new infections and a big increase in the number of people living longer with HIV as a result of being on antiretroviral therapy.

The report is a useful document, as far as it goes. But there isn't even a hint that several non-sexual modes of HIV transmission could be contributing to the worst HIV epidemic in the world (in terms of number of people living with HIV, 6.4 million). This is a lot more worrying than the increase in prevalence, because failing to address non-sexual modes of transmission will result in people continuing to be infected through unsafe healthcare, unsafe cosmetic practices and unsafe traditional practices.

Underlining the clear assumption that almost all HIV transmission is a result of unsafe sexual behavior, there is a lot of attention paid to mass male circumcision programs. These are not going so well in South Africa because the majority of circumcised people chose this as a tribal rite, not because they had been hoodwinked into believing that it would save them from various diseases, HIV just being one of them. But the report fails to stress that this means most circumcised males in South Africa faced a far higher risk of being infected with a number of diseases by being circumcised in unsterile conditions.

The report also agonizes over the usual 'behavioral determinants of HIV', such as early sexual debut (a minority of males and females become sexually active at a young age, the vast majority don't), 'intergenerational' sex (a minority, about a fifth of females do, most males don't and this issue has been questioned recently), multiple sexual partners (also a minority do this, more males than females, although HIV prevalence is far higher among females) and condom use (increasing, but probably too low to have much impact on transmission).

However, simply ignoring the possible significance of how people respond to questions is the most arrogant, and probably the most dangerous aspect of the report. There is a list of reasons people gave for believing they would not contract HIV and a few from this list were cited in the media, triumphantly, because some people who thought they would not contract the virus were already infected. Here's the list, with the number of people giving the response and the percentage:

Reasons for belief one would not contract HIV - number and % of cases

I have never had sex before 21,150, 11.0
I abstain from sex 21,147, 21.3
I am faithful to my partner 21,144, 32.0
I trust my partner 21,149, 22.5
I use condoms 21,146, 19.2
I know my HIV status 21,136, 9.8
I know the status of my partner 21,134, 4.4
I do not have sex with sex workers/prostitutes 21,112, 1.7
My ancestors protect me 21,070, 1.1
God protects me 21,142, 2.5
I am not at risk for HIV 21,151, 8.9
Other 21,142, 10.4

Do those carrying out the survey never, for one moment, suspect that some people might be telling the truth? Some people who have never had sex before are being told for the first time that they are HIV positive, and that it's almost certain they were infected through some kind of unsafe sex. What efforts are made to find out how they were infected? What about those who are faithful to their partner? Is their partner tested?

The authors of the report seem to relish the term 'evidence-based' when referring to various different 'interventions' that are expected to reduce HIV transmission; when these interventions appear to fail, those who become infected, or who give inconvenient answers to survey questions, are blamed for their 'sexual behavior'. If the researchers don't even check how people become infected, in what way are the interventions evidence-based? If people are not believed when the answers don't suit the researchers, why should we accept other parts of the report where the answers are in line with what the researchers expect to hear?

Assuming that HIV is almost always transmitted through 'unsafe' sexual behavior, regardless of all the indications that it is also transmitted through unsafe healthcare, cosmetic or traditional practices, is a betrayal of HIV positive people; it is also a betrayal of those who still risk becoming infected through such routes. These non-sexual routes urgently need to be addressed by investigating and cleaning up health centers, salons and other potential locations, and by warning patients about the dangers of being exposed to the blood and bodily fluids of other people.

UNAIDS' 3 Ones: One Disease, One Theory, One Solution

[Cross posted from the Don't Get Stuck With HIV site.]

According to Avert.com "more than $400 million [of donor funding] was committed to HIV and AIDS in 2007/2008". However, less than a quarter of that funding, probably around 20%, was spent on 'prevention', with the usual assumption that almost all HIV is transmitted through heterosexual behavior. Around 60% is estimated to have been spent on treatment and care, say around $240 million.

It's tremendous that a lot of money is being spent on treating and caring for people who have been infected with HIV. Not all HIV positive people are currently eligible for treatment. Perhaps UNAIDS' claim that 60% of those who are eligible were on treatment at some time, although the figure, however many hundreds of thousands it may be, does not discount those who have died or who have been otherwise lost to follow up.

Around 95% of Tanzanian people are HIV negative. Out of the 1,470,000 people who are living with HIV, between one and two thirds may be on treatment. That's 1-2% of Tanzanian people, at the most. So how do those who control the money decide how to spend the approximately $80 million in order to reduce transmission of HIV; what kind of prevention activities should be prioritized among those 46,300,000 Tanzanians who are still uninfected?

UNAIDS has a slogan (aside from their 'three ones' slogan alluded to in the title above) that goes 'know your epidemic - know your response'. This makes it sound like UNAIDS believes that there are different epidemics in each country, and perhaps even different subepidemics within each country. But their response is always to treat HIV epidemics in Africa as if they are all virtually the same, although they may vary in intensity: but they are all assumed to be 'driven' by heterosexual behavior.

It's not very clear how far $1.70 per head can go towards 'changing people's sexual behavior', but that hasn't stopped UNAIDS and other big players in the HIV industry (and some of them are very big players indeed) from trying. Billions have been spent on wagging fingers at rooms full of adults and children over the almost 20 years of UNAIDS' existence.

Luckily there are a few things that can be done to help establish that HIV is probably not entirely heterosexually transmitted and that most finger-wagging exercises are a complete waste of money (their inherent paternalism is probably not considered to be a disadvantage; perhaps neither is their clearly demonstrated ineffectiveness).

For example, in Tanzania (and most other countries) there are only a few places where HIV prevalence is really high. Here's a list of prevalence by region (the five with the lowest prevalence are the Zanzibar archipelago):

Njombe 14.8
Iringa 9.1
Mbeya 9
Shinyanga 7.4
Ruvuma 7
Dar es Salaam 6.9
Rukwa 6.2
Katavi 5.9
Pwani 5.9
Tabora 5.1
Kagera 4.8
Geita 4.7
Mara 4.5
Mwanza 4.2
Mtwara 4.1
Kilimanjaro 3.8
Morogoro 3.8
Simiyu 3.6
Kigoma 3.4
Singida 3.3
Arusha 3.2
Dodoma 2.9
Lindi 2.9
Tanga 2.4
Manyara 1.5
Mjini Magharibi 1.4
Kusini Unguja 0.5
Kusini Pemba 0.4
Kaskazini Pemba 0.3
Kaskazini Unguja 0.1

And there are further generalizations that can be made about HIV in Tanzania. Prevalence tends to be higher among females, urban dwellers, wealthier people, people with higher levels of education and employed people. It tends to be lower among men, rural dwellers, poorer people, people with lower levels of education and unemployed people.

UNAIDS tends to 'analyze' these features, which are shared by all high HIV prevalence countries, and conclude that wealthier, urban dwellers with jobs have bigger 'sexual networks' (etc) as if every person with HIV must have a 'sexual network' (etc). But there are other figures they could avail of when they are in an analytical frame of mind.

For example, while women are said to be more susceptible to HIV infection for various biological reasons, wealthier, urban dwelling, better edcated women with a job are also much more likely to attend ante natal clinics (ANC) and seek the assistance of some kind of trained health professional when they are giving birth.

Now, you might expect women who attend ANCs and have assisted deliveries to be less likely to be infected with HIV, but you'd be wrong. In many instances they are more likely to be infected, sometimes a lot more likely. Indeed, some countries with the highest HIV prevalence figures also have the highest ANC and attended birth figures, Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia and Zimbabwe, for example. The contrary tends to be true of low prevalence countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

This is not to say that HIV is never transmitted through heterosexual sex, or that it is always transmitted through unsafe healthcare (even among women). It's just a clear indication that we need to know exactly what contribution heterosexual behavior makes to epidemics, and what contribution may be made by non-sexual routes, such as unsafe healthcare, cosmetic care and perhaps other practices.

The whole concept of a UN agency set up to 'fight' one disease is bad enough. But it's a whole lot worse if they and the rest of the industry continue to squander precious resources on poorly targeted and ineffective interventions. Resources need to be spent on health, defined as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (there's no irony intended in citing WHO here).

Apparently one third of all aid in Tanzania is being spent on HIV, which leaves the other two thirds to be spent on other development areas. So perhaps some of that will eventually be used to address the many poorer, less well educated, jobless people living in rural areas with virtually no infrastructure or social services, but who are HIV negative. They will likely remain negative if even a fraction of available donor funding is spent on working out the relative contribution of unsafe healthcare to the worst HIV epidemics in the world and addressing this issue, however belatedly.

HIV Strategy: Blaming the Victim and their Individual Behavior

[Cross posted from the Don't Get Stuck With HIV website.]

Since the early days of HIV/AIDS, finger pointing has been the main publicity angle. In Western countries the collective finger was pointed at men who have sex with men. Their reaction was to object to the finger being pointed at them and to insist that everyone is equally at risk. Though some still believe that everyone is equally at risk, it is not true. In Western countries the majority of HIV transmissions have always been among men who have sex with men, with a smaller proportion of transmissions through intravenous drug use.

But things are quite different in developing countries, particularly high HIV prevalence African countries. In high HIV prevalence countries men who have sex with men, intravenous drug users and even sex workers contribute a relatively small proportion of HIV transmissions. In fact, the largest contribution still appears to come from those with little or no risk; mainly monogamous heterosexuals. So the process of finger pointing often turns into one of victim blaming. After all, you can't point the finger at everyone around you, nor at someone who is HIV negative; so the clearest 'evidence' of unsafe sexual behavior becomes HIV positive status.

This gives rise to the task of explaining how a virus that is difficult to transmit through heterosexual sex outside of Africa is so frequently transmitted through that route in Africa. The HIV industry needed to show that 'Africans' must be promiscuous, ignorant and unhygienic. This wasn't too difficult because population control advocates (the word 'eugenics' is no longer fashionable), a significant proportion of wealthy NGOs operating in Africa, had had been playing the over-sexed, under-educated slum-dweller cards for decades.

The processes of pointing the finger at a particular group whose behavior was disapproved of, blaming those infected with HIV for their status, and concluding that HIV is all a matter of individual behavior, threw off course any efforts to reduce HIV transmission in developing countries. Although 'prevention' activities only receive a small proportion of HIV funding, that is still a massive amount of money. But prevention activities have rarely gone beyond exhortations to 'behave' in a particular way. The finger-wagging programs perfected by population control NGOs decades before HIV was identified became, and often remain, the state of the art of HIV prevention.

There has been plenty of research showing that these finger-wagging programs are of little or no benefit (except to the NGOs). An example of such research shows that "peer education programs in developing countries are moderately effective at improving behavioral outcomes, but show no significant impact on biological outcomes". There is a voluminous body of literature showing that you can't simply wag your finger at people and expect them to change their behavior, whether the aim is to address substance abuse, dangerous driving, over-eating or anything else.

Sometimes the association of HIV transmission with individual behavior is further connected with conditions that are beyond the control of the victim, for example, poverty. But this has also given rise to confusion: there is plenty of evidence that HIV in African countries is transmitted among wealthier people. This challenges the idea that HIV epidemics are driven by sexual behavior because, even if wealthy people 'can afford to have a lot of sex and a lot of partners', as the HIV industry would have it, there would need to be some poor people involved in this theory. Rich people don't pay other rich people for sex.

Instead of looking beyond sex, or sex and poverty, it seems some researchers are convinced they will eventually find out how sex and economic inequalities 'drive' HIV epidemics. One paper concludes that "Further work is needed to understand the mechanisms explaining the concentration of HIV/AIDS among wealthier individuals and urban residents in [sub-Saharan Africa]". But they don't seem to consider the possibility that their protohypothesis about sex is simply wrong. They don't seem to think that non-sexual transmission may be a very significant factor in the spread of HIV among wealthier people.

HIV can be transmitted through unsafe healthcare and other skin-piercing processes, such as various cosmetic processes. Wealthy people tend to have better access to healthcare. In fact, urban dwellers also tend to have better access to healthcare. Perhaps this is why the above paper found that HIV is "generally concentrated among wealthier men and women". This may also explain why HIV "was concentrated among the poor in urban areas but among wealthier adults in rural areas" in a number of countries.

Instead of trying so hard (and failing, over and over again) to find out what it is about the sexual behavior of wealthy people and urban dwellers, perhaps researchers should look at non-sexual risks, as well as sexual risks. Could the risks that people face be determined by their wealth and environment, precisely because they are not sexual risks, but healthcare and other risks? These risks are clearly not *individual* risks. They relate to health-seeking behavior, but it is not the behavior of wealthy and/or urban-dwelling people that gives rise to infection with HIV in a hospital or salon; the risk of infection depends on whether the facility is safe or not (which might vary considerably over time).

Some historians of HIV, such as Jacques Pepin (The Origins of Aids), admit that HIV was mainly transmitted through unsafe healthcare for many decades, and hardly ever through sexual behavior. But they don't explain how healthcare transmission magically disappeared in the 1980s even though conditions in many African countries remain very unsafe (although how unsafe they are is still a dangerously under-researched field).

Coupled with the magical disappearance of the risk of HIV transmission in under-equipped, under-staffed and badly run health facilities is the magical re-appearance of the promiscuous, ignorant and dirty African, though for many, this had never really gone away. Pepin vaguely mentions things like 'urbanization' as the main explanation for levels of promiscuity for which there has never been any evidence and which do not explain very high rates of heterosexual transmission of HIV anyway.

Ugandans have recently responded to having the finger pointed at them by allowing an 'anti-homosexuality' bill to be passed, effectively saying 'it's not us, it's them'. Various human rights groups, and even some donors, may belatedly object to such disgusting measures, which are being copied by other African countries. But the objection needs to be directed at the approach to HIV that began a long time ago, and began in Western countries, not in African countries. Men who have sex with men are by no means the only group who have been blamed for HIV epidemics. Other groups include long distance drivers, sex workers, house girls, fishermen, miners, and many others. It's this finger-pointing approach that gives rise to the stigma that those pointing the finger claim to abhor.

Thirty years into the HIV epidemic (I'm adopting the view that HIV is not a pandemic because most people don't face any risk of being infected and prevalence is, and will remain, low in most countries) research institutions, NGOs, international bodies and, perhaps most importantly, donors are still obsessing about sexual behavior and pretending that HIV status is up to the individual when it is clear that a large, but as yet unestimated, proportion of infections is a result of unsafe healthcare and other skin-piercing processes.

UNAIDS' Dubious Claims about HIV/AIDS 2013

[Cross-posted from the Don't Get Stuck With HIV site.]

UNAIDS risk missing their target of reducing "sexual transmission of HIV by 50% by 2015". But there is a way of meeting that target, and they could meet it by tomorrow. If they belatedly admit that HIV is far more easily transmitted through unsafe healthcare, they could begin to estimate the contribution of things like reuse of needles, syringes and other equipment that comes into contact with blood and other bodily fluids.

This would also greatly assist their progress towards their 'ZeroDiscrimination' target too, because even though they can't reverse the damage they have done by insisting that Africans are irremediably promiscuous, the status of this claim as institutionalized racism will eventually become clear, at least to those who are prepared to think the issue through a little (a surprisingly small number of people so far).

After all, reducing 'sexual transmission' is one of their stated goals, whereas UNAIDS has barely breathed a word about transmission through unsafe healthcare in their 20 year, multibillion dollar, celebrity studded reign. They could just quietly (imperceptibly, even) reveal some changes in the way figures are collected and next December 1, a re-estimation of non-sexual transmission of HIV could be the subject most deserving of their customary (spontaneous) standing ovation module.

UNAIDS are uncharacteristically frank about mass male circumcision, which is something of an embarrassing fiasco: "As of December 2012, 3.2 million African men had been circumcised [...]. The cumulative number of men circumcised almost doubled in 2012, rising from 1.5 million as of December 2011. Still, it is clear that reaching the estimated target number of 20 million in 2015 will require a dramatic acceleration." (They don't say how many of the 3.2 million circumcised over quite a few years would have been circumcised anyway but took advantage of the free (anesthetized) operation.) Might this spell an unobtrusive retreat from this dangerous imperialist program?

But one of the heftiest pieces of bullshit in the 'report' (and there is stiff competition) is about "the goal of providing antiretroviral therapy to 15 million people by 2015". They say that "As of December 2012, an estimated 9.7 million people in low- and middle-income countries were receiving antiretroviral therapy, an increase of 1.6 million over 2011. That brings the world nearly two-thirds of the way towards the 2015 target of 15 million people accessing antiretroviral treatment."

The difference between UNAIDS' claim and the truth is expressed in a few words, such as 'were receiving' therapy. If they said that 9.7 million people had been recruited on to a therapy program, that might have been true (or somewhat closer to the truth). But 9.7 million is, at best, the number of people who have at one time been put on a program. Neither UNAIDS, WHO, PEPFAR, CDC nor anyone else knows how many of those 9.7 million ever took the drugs, or for how long, how many dropped out of the program, how many were recruited on to two or more programs or simply died, etc.

No one knows, and no one really cares because 9.7 million is an impressive figure, and it sounds like a good attempt at the 15 million target. There is not much incentive to estimate how many people are alive and on antiretroviral treatment, indeed, such an estimate could prove fatal to several substantial institutions (not just UNAIDS, which seems to thrive on failure to achieve anything at all, aside from spending money and institutionalizing bigotry). Is the true figure 8 million people, 7 million, or some far lower number? Billions of dollars say that no one is going to ask this impertinent question (unless they are not in receipt of any of those billions, and never will be).

Unsafe healthcare does exist in extremely poor, high HIV prevalence countries, surprising as that may seem to those who are used to the mainstream view that HIV is hardly ever transmitted through heterosexual sex in every country in the world, but almost always transmitted through heterosexual sex in a handful of African countries. What contribution does unsafe healthcare make to the worst HIV epidemics in the world, all in sub-Saharan Africa? Would it be the one or two percent UNAIDS grudgingly suggests, or something far higher? We don't know yet. No billions have been offered for the answer to this question.

Using cumulative figures is great, because you get that great 'step' effect when you produce bar graphs, and there is nothing like comforting, progressive steps to convince people that everything is good in UNAIDSland, and in the HIV industry in general. A very achievable 2015 target would be the abolition of UNAIDS and the promotion of safe healthcare. Because unsafe healthcare risks the spread of HIV, something UNAIDS has never got around to accepting. But I suspect that instead, there will be a continuation of the finger-pointing and victim-blaming that has characterized the mainstream approach to HIV in high prevalence countries so far.

Justine Sacco: Dangerous Truths and Dangerous Falsehoods about HIV

[Reposted from the Don't Get Stuck With HIV website.]

An American on her way to South Africa is said to have Tweeted "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" This is a heartless and insensitive remark to make. But what makes it most heartless and insensitive for a white American to say it is the fact that it is so true. In the US, African Americans accounted for 44% of all new HIV infections in 2010, despite representing only 12-14% of the population. Also in the US, men who have sex with men are said to represent about 4% of the population, but account for 63% of all new HIV infections in 2010, and a disproportionate number of them are black/African American.

Even in South Africa HIV prevalence among white people is very low. But national prevalence is amongst the highest in the world and there are more HIV positive people in South Africa than in any other country. While America has the worst HIV epidemic in the developed world, with over 1.1 million HIV positive people, the majority of infections arise among men who have sex with men and (to a lesser extent) intravenous drug users. HIV infection among white heterosexuals who have no serious risks, such as receptive anal sex or intravenous drug use, is very low.

The American who tweeted the first stupid, but sadly true, remark offended so many people that she arrived in South Africa to find that a storm had erupted on Twitter and she had lost her job. So, to make matters worse, she made a statement to a South African newspaper which contained a dangerous but often heard falsehood:

"For being insensitive to this crisis -- which does not discriminate by race, gender or sexual orientation, but which terrifies us all uniformly -- and to the millions of people living with the virus, I am ashamed."

This is completely untrue, as the figures for the US show so clearly. About two thirds of people living with HIV globally are black Africans. An estimated 60% of HIV positive people in Africa are female, compared to only 20% of new infections in the US in 2010. Hispanics and Latinos in the US made up 21% of new infections in 2010; the rate of infection was 2.9 times higher in Latinos than it was in white males; it was also 4.2 times higher in Latinas than in white women.

HIV most definitely does discriminate by race, gender and sexual orientation. This is not a new discovery, either. It may be an acceptable thing to say in certain circles, but we should never forget the differences between HIV in Africa, where the majority of HIV positive people live, and HIV in developed countries, where HIV is less prevalent overall, and is rare among heterosexuals who have no serious risk behaviors.

Justine Sacco, who tweeted the remark, is so right to think that she is very unlikely to be infected with HIV; a lot less likely than a black African, and also less likely than a black or Latino/Latina American. It is disturbing to think that so many people continue to believe or say otherwise. Why is HIV prevalence so high among black Africans and black/African Americans, yet comparatively low among white people, especially white men who engage in no serious risk behaviors?