Are We About to Take the Biggest Step Yet in Reducing HIV Transmission?

Recently, I blogged about WHO's estimates for the number of people infected every year with HIV through unsafe injections and wondered why the number, 23,000, was so low. It was an error in the original reporting. In fact the number is 260,000 HIV infections. In addition, unsafe injections account for millions of transmissions of hepatitis B and C and a host of other diseases.

To put this in perspective, just under 10% of HIV in Uganda is transmitted via sex workers, their clients and their clients' partners, all together. The figure for Kenya is about 15%. But the contribution of unsafe injections is estimated at about 14%, and it could be a lot higher in some places.

The majority of HIV positive people in high prevalence countries did not engage in 'unsafe' sex, according to Modes of Transmission Surveys. But you'd never think that when you read articles about sexual behavior and commercial sex work. The percentage actually attributed to sex workers is less than 2%. It's the clients and partners of clients who make up the bulk of that 10% figure.

Despite sex playing a far smaller role in the AIDS pandemic than we are led to believe by most media and academic writings, the evidence that something else is playing a big part is all around. In South Africa, farm workers in two provinces have some of the highest rates ever found anywhere, almost 40%. Compare this to HIV prevalence among sex workers in India, which stands at about 7%. That's about the same as national prevalence in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Are we supposed to conclude that some Africans engage in far more unsafe sex than Indian sex workers?

The Institute of Migration study, apparently, "could not pin-point a single factor causing this high rate of HIV infection on these farms but points instead to a combination of factors such as multiple and concurrent partnerships, transactional sex, irregular condom use, presence of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and/or TB and high levels of sexual violence". But these factors are present in many places in the world, in developing and developed countries, without giving rise to such astonishing HIV rates.

Dr Eric Ventura says that more research is clearly needed. But perhaps some different research is needed and even some investigation of the results of some already completed research. Not that there isn't plenty of research into non-sexual transmission, but UNAIDS and many others in the HIV industry choose to ignore it. Perhaps now that WHO have seen the light, UNAIDS will follow. But Ventura suggests, among other things, increasing farm worker acces to healthcare.

Perhaps access to healthcare is the biggest problem in South Africa and some of the surrounding high prevalence countries. Most of the very high HIV prevalence African countries have better access to healthcare than some of the medium prevalence countries, such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. But what quality of healthcare? Increasing access to healthcare will be counterproductive if poor healthcare is contributing more to the pandemic than commercial sex, which has been such a popular punchbag up to now.

Very slowly, the issue of injection safety and other forms of non-sexual transmission of HIV is being raised and even being picked up by the media. The above figures about unsafe injections were supplied by Safepoint Tanzania, who have been trying to get this vital topic on the agenda. But when it comes to media attention, or even that of the HIV industry, sex always trumps boring old healthcare.

With all the interest in criminal HIV transmission (through 'unsafe' sex, of course), I wonder if we will ever look back on the days when UNAIDS and others tasked with reducing HIV transmission consistently refused to accept that a very significant proportion was coming from unsafe injections and ask ourselves how they could get away with this? Because what they are getting away with now constitutes professional negligence that far exceeds that of those who continued to use blood products contaminated with HIV long after they knew the risks.

As another World AIDS Day looms and the 'experts' drone on about what a brilliant job they have been doing, it's time to take what will be the biggest single step ever towards reducing HIV transmission in African countries. That is to recognize that HIV is not just about sex, unsafe or otherwise, and by acting to eliminate the most avoidable and preventable factors in the spread of the virus: unsafe injections and other healthcare procedures.