The AIDS Enigma

NVDL: One of the consequences of the current financial meltdown is that money for research - for example into AIDS - evaporates over night. It also means that money to monitor other threats - such as bird flu - slow down to a mere trickle. And then when you see outbreaks, the ability to contain these decrease. This is how civilisation gets overwhelmed, muscled out by ordinary forces of nature. Whereas we once thought we could buy whatever we needed, we now move into a world where commodities either no longer exist, or there is no money, resources or resolve to buy them if they do.

Then you get a headline like this, which is code for: Relax, it's over.

Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits

Okay, so we're right about that, right, I mean we're certain... even if we were wrong about other AIDS stuffs...

AIDS virus decades older than thought

"It is the question we are asked most often – why is the situation so bad in sub-Saharan Africa? It is a combination of factors – more commercial sex workers, more ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases, a young population and concurrent sexual partnerships."

"Sexual behaviour is obviously important but it doesn't seem to explain [all] the differences between populations. Even if the total number of sexual partners [in sub-Saharan Africa] is no greater than in the UK, there seems to be a higher frequency of overlapping sexual partnerships creating sexual networks that, from an epidemiological point of view, are more efficient at spreading infection."

Low rates of circumcision, which is protective, and high rates of genital herpes, which causes ulcers on the genitals through which the virus can enter the body, also contributed to Africa's heterosexual epidemic.

"The impact of HIV is so heterogeneous. In the US , the rate of infection among men in Washington DC is well over 100 times higher than in North Dakota, the region with the lowest rate. That is in one country. How do you explain such differences?"

NVDL: I think the relationship with infection rates is a combination of arrogance, ignorance and appetites. A more urbanised individual gets caught up in the sexual competition thanks to the media and a target rich environment. In some rural areas there is more ignorance, but arrogance remains a factor as the individual spends his time bedding partners in order to feel better about his/her situation. Both are certainly a factor of an appetite that is out of control.

clipped from www.independent.co.uk Aids still kills more adults than all wars and conflicts combined, and is vastly bigger than current efforts to address it. A joint WHO/UN Aids report published this month showed that nearly three million people are now receiving anti-retroviral drugs in the developing world, but this is less than a third of the estimated 9.7 million people who need them. In all there were 33 million people living with HIV in 2007, 2.5 million people became newly infected and 2.1 million died of Aids. "Aids still remains the leading infectious disease challenge in public health. It is an acute infection but a chronic disease. It is for the very, very long haul. People are backing off, saying it is taking care of itself. It is not." "It is astonishing how badly we have done with men who have sex with men. It is something that is going to have to be discussed much more rigorously."