HIV in Kenya

HIV Own Goals – LGBTQ in Uganda

2023-05-08T21:43:00.004+03:00

Shaming people for their alleged sexual behavior has deadly consequences for everyone infected with HIV and anyone engaged in behaviors said to result in HIV transmission, or claimed to be so engaged. Given the weight of evidence against the sexual behavior paradigm of HIV transmission (which, mysteriously, only operates in high prevalence African countries), why does the industry still use it to prop up every campaign?

When HIV was identified in several US cities in the 1980s, it was mainly found among men who had sex with men (MSM), injecting drug users (IDU) and people who received blood products or transfusions that contained the virus. Now, 40 years later, the largest proportion of people in those same US cities with HIV are MSM, with IDUs a distant second.

A few years later, when HIV started to spread rapidly in African countries, such ‘high risk groups’ did not account for the highest proportion of HIV transmissions. Rather, prevalence was higher among people who were not MSM or IDUs. Prevalence was high among a group often referred to as commercial sex workers (CSW), or just as sex workers. But it’s not clear that these were coherent groups of people who self-identified as sex workers, or if they were assumed to be sex workers by those collecting data, on the basis of their HIV status.

In fact, many of the people infected with HIV early on in the epidemic in African countries which subsequently experienced the highest prevalence rates in the world were more closely associated with healthcare than with high levels of ‘risky’ sexual behavior. Women who gave birth in health facilities, even clients of STI facilities, were infected in very large numbers. And that is still the case. Most people infected do not engage in any kind of risky behavior. Their infections are unexplained by the prevailing paradigm.

From the 1980s onwards, very high transmission rates in African countries tended to be found in cities, within the compounds of employers of large numbers of people, such as mines and other labor-intensive industries, close to well-developed infrastructures, in the vicinity of large hospitals, and in areas and countries where healthcare was accessible to all or most people. Examples of this are South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Swaziland and Lesotho, mostly in Southern or Eastern Africa.

In contrast, most countries, even on the African continent, experienced lower transmission rates. Transmission rates in countries in the north of the continent, especially those on or overlapping with the Sahara, were, and still are, lower than in many US cities. Isolated areas, places where healthcare facilities didn’t exist, or were not used by most people, remained relatively free of HIV. Even in countries where HIV prevalence was very high in some areas, it remained low in isolated areas. Examples are Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and others, where there are only a few high prevalence hostpots.

So why did the HIV industry play the LGBTQ and promiscuity cards in countries where neither MSM nor sexual behavior seemed to be the biggest risk for HIV transmission? If the industry wanted people in African countries to reduce transmission, they would have had more success if they had encouraged healthcare facilities to figure out why they seemed to be the source of a lot of infections, perhaps a majority. The funders of healthcare (and HIV) would have been ideally placed to insist that an appropriate proportion of funding be spent on healthcare safety, or to withdraw the funding if it was not.

Some transmission may have been a result of sexual behavior, although probably not the sexual behavior of most people, which tended to be conservative. And MSM sex does occur, despite western ‘experts’ initially claiming that it was rare in ‘African’ countries. But successive Modes of Transmission Surveys have shown that infections among these higher risk groups make up only a small proportion of total infections.

All people infected with HIV, young women, men, married or single, those engaged in sex work, or alleged to be so engaged, every MSM, including those alleged to be gay, prisoners and almost everyone else in high HIV prevalence countries suffer the consequences of the continued association of high HIV prevalence with promiscuity and with MSM.

An article in SciDev.net trots out the tired old fictoids, about homophobia threatening ‘HIV progress’, about HIV prevalence being "higher in countries with laws that criminalize homosexuality", and the insinuation that this “could impact foreign aid to Uganda”.

The deep homophobia that we see in Uganda and other high HIV prevalence countries didn’t exist in the 1980s. The bill (the ‘Bahati Bill’) that initially proposed lengthy sentences and even the death penalty was supported by US evangelical Christians. The spite towards ‘sex workers’ and people who were perceived as being promiscuous was a continuation of long-held prejudices about ‘African’ promiscuity, dating back to the Eugenicists, and beyond.

The worst HIV epidemic in the world is in South Africa, where as much as 20% of the global population of HIV positive people live. Yet, homosexuality is not criminalized there. In contrast, HIV prevalence in most North African countries is lower than that found in many western countries and in US cities where HIV prevalence has been high since the 1980s, although homosexuality is criminalized in most North African countries. Many countries where homosexuality is criminalized are also countries with low or very low HIV prevalence, such as those in the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere.

Numerous Aids Indicator Surveys and Demographic and Health Surveys show that most people in all countries, on every continent, engage in relatively low levels of sex, ‘risky’ or otherwise. Some people engage in high levels of sex, sometimes ‘risky’ sex, in every country. Among MSM, only some are ‘promiscuous’ and many take precautions to avoid infecting others or being infected with HIV. Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, people engaged in sex work are unlikely to be infected with HIV unless they are also IDUs or have some other, non-sexual risk.

Playing the promiscuity and LBGTQ cards is what drives the increasing homophobia seen in countries like Uganda. Obama and Cameron threatened to reconsider HIV funding after the Bahati Bill was proposed and Museveni, predictably, said they could keep their funding. This SciDev.net article seems to be reiterating that threat. It was the HIV industry that built itself up around prejudices and issues that the legacy and trade media will always report assiduously.

If SciDev.net and the HIV industry in general are genuinely interested in addressing HIV transmission, after dithering for 4 decades, they could start asking some of these questions that have long demanded an answer. If only some HIV transmission is accounted for by sexual behavior, including MSM sex, how is the rest to be accounted for? If that question is not answered then HIV transmission will continue through the industry’s next ‘target’, 2030.

Have We Got Brews for You!

2022-11-26T00:38:00.003+03:00

Apparently you can now 'print' a plant based meat substitute in 3D, and the texture and taste are excellent, according to the new Jeremy Clarkson of the culinary world, George 'GM' Monbiot. He has been singing from the rooftops about other wonderful techno-utopian offerings, such as 'precision fermentation' and even genetically engineered 'solutions' to all the world's problems. On his RePlanet, ReBoot, ReFood, ReGurgitate manifesto he actually claims that these technologies can provide "abundant food to the world's poorest".

When was the last time a new technology was used to benefit the world's poorest? Covid vaccines may have been produced remarkably quickly, but billions were made out of them. The same billions could have been used to feed people, or cure the conditions that most people in poor countries die from, prematurely. For example, provision of clean water would eliminate a huge proportion of the most deadly pathogens, even polio. But no, we're going to address each water-borne pathogen, one by one, with a vaccine, because we make money out of that.

When George lists how much protein food produced by precision fermentation will contain, requiring 1,700 times less land, less water too, and producing less greenhouse gases, I wondered how these 'facts' were so much more reliable than similar 'facts' that have been published about GM. Of course, for the English guardian, a fact is whatever the mainstream currently holds to be the orthodox view. And that can change. But being a mainstream journalist means you turn with the wind, nothing new about that.

Anyhow, since the English guardian has become such an evangelist for techno-fixes, perhaps they would consider the much hyped Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Generation (NLG), in particular. Using the online (free) version of GPT3, you can take the first paragraph of George's encyclical:

"Let’s focus for a moment on technology. Specifically, what might be the most important environmental technology ever developed: precision fermentation."

And the result you get is:

"The technology has been around for decades, of course, but it was never used to tackle a big environmental problem. Now it is. Precision fermentation is the technology that will allow us to make the next generation of biofuels. It is also the technology that will help us make a new generation of medicines, including antibiotics. And, if we can find a way to use precision fermentation to make food, it will help us feed the world."

A little bit of editorial work could make that indistinguishable from something penned by the venerable man himself. It goes on:

"Precision fermentation is a technology that allows us to control the environment in which microorganisms grow. We can control the temperature, the pH, the amount of oxygen, and the nutrients. We can also control the genes of the microorganisms. This means that we can make microorganisms do what we want them to do. This technology has already had a big impact on the world of medicine. We now have vaccines that are made with precision fermentation. We also have a new generation of antibiotics that are made with precision fermentation. And, we are just beginning to explore the potential of precision fermentation to make new medicines."

The Natural Language Generation tool goes on about producing biofuels using the precision fermentation process. Can this be done? Because even the guardian can't control what precision fermentation (or GM, or NLG, or any other techno-utopian next big thing) is used for.

But here's another question: how do we know that NLG isn't already being used by the mainstream media? A lot of BBC articles are clearly written using a template, with a few bits shuffled around. How do we know George didn't use it when he was writing the article in question, or that he won't use it in the future?

I don't think anyone would mistake the unedited paragraphs for the work of a human. But if any mainstream media baron were to think how much money they could save on expensive columnists (note that the guardian article appears in their ironically titled section 'comment is free'), there's no telling what 'solutions' they'd stoop to. As long as they don't print 3D, plant-based versions of George himself. And I'm now imagining the movie: 'Being George Monbiot'.

But I digress. Or do I?

Who Killed Schrödinger's Environmentalist?

2022-11-20T19:17:00.002+03:00

GMWatch reports that the former activist George Monbiot is teaming up with his good friend, the publicity hungry Mark Lynas. Monbiot has decided that EU organic targets need to be scrutinised (which is a good point, nothing should go unquestioned). But he also aligns himself with the 'ecomodernist' movement. The process of 'modernising' includes deregulation, neoliberalism, corporate takeover and other phenomena that Monbiot (and even Lynas, a long time ago) once opposed.

Monbiot seems to be joining the GM lobby in shedding crocodile tears about the need to 'feed the world', as if outlandishly expensive and embarrassingly unproductive technologies were ever about anything beyond serving the interests of those who owned it. Is he going to promote the highly destructive glyphosate, which is designed to systematically wipe out everything in its path except genetically modified organisms, which are completely resistant to the pesticide (for a while)?

Perhaps Monbiot himself has developed resistance to the dangerous lies of the likes of Bayer Monsanto (Zyclon B, HIV contaminated blood products, Roundup, etc)? Taking money from the Gates Foundation to promote GM organisms, as Lynas does, wouldn't be such a big step for Monbiot. He already works for one of the most slippery neoliberal organs, the (English) Guardian, whose 'Global' development section is bought and paid for by Gates's 'Foundation'.

Monbiot claims that he and his neoliberal apologist friends don't agree on everything. That's good to hear. Such as? About 10 years ago, Lynas wheeled out GM as a 'solution' to staple food price increases, threatened shortages and famine in East Africa. Even a former activist should know that famine is not a result of a country's inability to produce enough food, and that rapidly increasing prices were a result of commodity speculation in rich countries, including the UK.

Committed environmentalists have campaigned for GM to be recognised for what it is: a technology for taking over global food production, controlling it with any legal, political, (un)scientific, (im)moral or other means, and using that position of global domination to make the owners of GM and other controlling technologies as rich and powerful as possible.

The English Guardian, BBC and other 'liberal' media have made it absolutely clear where they stand on the issue of global domination. They are completely in favour of it, as long as they are the ones in control, on the 'right' side of history. They will go to any lengths to ensure that all legal, political, scientific, moral and other means are in accord with their agenda (or vice versa, it's often hard to tell).

Ecomodernism is what's left over when you stamp out every vestige of humanity, sincerity and fellow feeling. It's tempting to say it's a form of greenwashing, but it's more like a pesticide that wipes out all opposition, a kind of branding iron that you can use to punish all detractors, and warn the devout to keep their distance.

Global Health Tears the World a New One

2021-02-11T20:06:00.002+03:00

The Felicific Calculus used by international institutions and global media has decreed that all the bad things in the world, whomever or whatever may have been blamed for them in the past, are now almost entirely accounted for by Covid-19. The world of ordinary people knows that the calculus is a hoax, and that poverty, sickness, disability, economic and environmental collapse, anything that is getting worse since the pandemic started, are a result of the response to it, not the pandemic.

The English Guardian churns out another clickbait article, deeply concerned about the effects of Covid-19, seemingly oblivious to the fact that every item ticked off in their spreadsheet predates the virus by decades, even centuries. Other media have jumped in with organ trafficking, persecution of people with HIV, family planning provision, availability of sanitary pads, teen pregnancy, child abuse, domestic abuse, female genital mutilation (sic), child marriage, orphans and much else, striving to update their advocacy with the latest hashtags.

And the universal solution to all these problems is technology! There are vaccines, masks, hand sanitizers, handheld computers and anything else that can be sold to people who have lived their whole lives without access to running water, an adequate and varied diet, in environments that have been depleted, to a large extent, by the same countries that produce all the technology and the purported solutions and their array of placebo suppositories.

For the Guardian, decades of progress on extreme poverty is now in reverse due to Covid, so the title goes. But much of the ‘evidence’ for this is from a World Bank wonk, who pours out the usual sanctimonious spiel about all the great things that have been achieved, but that are now threatened by a pandemic. They are not threatened by a pandemic, they are threatened by the response to it.

Bear in mind, this is the institution to which almost every poor country is in debt. Much of those countries’ annual earnings is sent to repay loans they have been persuaded to take over a period of several decades. A handful of international institutions have pushed poor countries to reduce public sector employment, spending on health, education, infrastructure and social services. Indeed, they have ensured the destruction of the very things that they now claim are vital to address Covid-19: hospitals, schools, infrastructure and social services.

Poor countries are arm-twisted by such international institutions into handing over all resources that are of value to multinationals. Multinationals are not content to rip out everything they can get their hands on, but will happily destroy environments, communities, water supplies, economies and anything else, and leave behind an enormous tab for the host to pay. The very means to survive for most people, fertile land, water, food, employment, agriculture, etc., are denied to those countries in the name of modernization and development.

The World Bank knows more than most about the conditions in poor countries, because they have spent so long reducing struggling economies to rubble. Countries that had anything worth exploiting were, effectively, colonized by poverty profiteers, people who were paid to take what they wanted, and often took a lot more. Media, like the Guardian, dutifully cover ‘disasters’ as if the damage they wreak on increasingly vulnerable populations is entirely unforeseen, unpredictable, an ‘act of God’.

Since when has the World Bank been the go-to source of ideas for reducing poverty, or for improving the conditions that most people in the world live in? The countries that have followed their ideologies, as they gradually moved from the vile and despotic policies of 40 years ago to the most comprehensive and widespread enslavement and subjugation of people living in poor countries that we see today, are the ones suffering the most now.

The only thing more disgusting than promulgating this kind of poverty porn is the pretence that the English Guardian, the World Bank or any of the other big players in the media, international financial institutions and the development industry have the slightest sympathy for those who suffer most from the conditions that underlie this veneer of humanitarianism and philanthropy.

If these prognostications from the media are correct, and many things really have improved over the past 30-40 years, then we must return to where we were before the pandemic, and identify what we were doing right, and do more of that. Many things will need to be done differently, and the big players of the past will be reluctant to do anything not in their interest. But these lockdowns are a disaster and must be ended before the damage they are doing becomes irreversible.

To those who herald in the ‘new normal’, there’s nothing new about poverty, disease, food shortages, droughts and disasters. Lockdowns exacerbate and further institutionalize phenomena that have been around for as long as people in poor countries can remember. There's nothing new about authoritarianism, but we have been happy to overlook it when it was imposed on distant countries. It now threatens everyone and it's not something to be encouraged.

In Memory of Dr Joseph Sonnabend, 6 Jan 1933–24 Jan 2021

2021-01-26T23:34:00.004+03:00

Dr Joseph Sonnabend’s first concern was always the welfare of his patients, their families and the people they loved. Before HIV was identified as the virus that caused Aids, Dr Sonnabend was treating people suffering from the shocking illnesses that he and others were discovering among their patients in New York, mostly gay men. Many people infected in the 1980s died. But some survived because of the work of professionals such as Joseph. He pioneered safe sex as a response to HIV and Aids among gay men, and gave his patients the undivided attention that few others were prepared to give.

Joseph set up and ran several institutions to address the epidemic, care for sick people and research the disease. But when some of his colleagues joined with other parties to create a myth about an imminent ‘heterosexual Aids’ pandemic in order to raise funding, he left. Joseph was branded a ‘denialist’ by those who didn’t wish to deal with any of the numerous concerns that he raised. However, Joseph continued to insist that you cannot understand the spread of a disease if you fail to identify the most important circumstances surrounding its transmission. He still held his ‘multi-factorial’ view of HIV a few months ago, in a discussion about the history of the pandemic with Sean Strub and Dr. Stuart Schlossman. When Schlossman claimed that no one held such a view any longer, Joseph disagreed, but did not have the opportunity to defend his position at that time.

Joseph told me later that his ‘multi-factorial’ view of disease transmission is a characterization of epidemiology as the study of pathogen, host and environment, and not an idiosyncratic theory of his own. He said that most people he worked with in immunology and epidemiology held a similar view, and did not reduce the explanation of HIV infection and the development of Aids to an account of the pathogen, alone, independent of host and environment factors. That’s why the multi-factorial view of HIV explains a lot more than its sexual transmission among men who have sex with men. The theory can also be used to understand the extraordinary outbreaks of HIV transmission among people who are neither male, gay, intravenous drug users, nor even sex workers. The worst of these outbreaks are all to be found in a few countries in southern and eastern Africa, including Zimbabwe and South Africa, where Joseph spent several decades of his life.

Joseph confirmed my belief that HIV is not ‘all about sex’ in high prevalence countries, and that the worst epidemics cannot be accounted for by alleged ‘unsafe’ sexual behavior among African people. He often asked how women can transmit HIV to men via sexual intercourse, saying he knew of no causal mechanism to explain it. Something about the host and the environment, African people and the conditions they live in, the experiences they have, the diseases they suffer, their crumbling healthcare facilities, their poverty and their position as former possessions of European powers could turn out to be a part of a credible explanation of the highest rates of HIV transmission in the world.

Joseph was concerned about the way people lived, their welfare, their “complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO’s definition of health, not necessarily exemplified by their activities). He was not content with vaccines and cures, treatment regimens and medications, alone. In fact, Joseph was opposed to what he saw as the rapidly increasing ‘medicalization’ of healthcare, and disgusted by the systematic humiliation of African people, who were blamed for their own sickness and told to quietly accept what they were given.

Many people have learned a great deal from Joseph, and benefited from his work. He distanced himself from those who saw HIV and Aids as a launchpad for their own careers and ambitions, and he refused to get involved in the more lucrative side of the pandemic. He will be much missed.

With Responses Like These, Who Needs a Pandemic?

2020-08-18T14:39:00.000+03:00

The Open Society Initiative has announced a Covid19 Emergency Response Fund. Great to hear, but first key area on their list is health system strengthening. Health systems have been in need of funding for decades.

Second on the list is mitigating the economic impact of Covid19, but that is far more a matter of the devastating effects of lockdowns, people unable to work, purchase food, tend to food production, sell produce, etc.

A few headlines highlight some of the emergencies faced by African countries and they seem to be either: 1) caused by the response to Covid19, not the virus itself, or 2) emergencies that go back many decades, and increase the harm that kneejerk lockdowns, curfews and the like can cause.

Unemployment, nothing new, but exacerbated by global lockdowns: Nigeria Records 21.8 Million Jobless People After Covid-19 Effects

Female Genital Mutilation, nothing to do with the pandemic, but NGOs need to follow the money: No Christmas for West Pokot Girls

Economic inclusiveness, again, every cause needs to mention the current focus of the media: Covid-19 - Where to From Here for Efforts to Support Youth Economic Inclusion?

The number of confirmed deaths from Covid19 in Africa is about a third of the number of people who die of rabies every year: Lessons From a Community-Driven Rabies Vaccination Campaign in Kenya

Diabetes, a recognized risk factor for many conditions long before Covid19: Covid-19 - Understanding the Increased Risk in People With Diabetes

Foot and Mouth, like all other health conditions, put on the back burner. If there’s an outbreak of this disease now, countries that have closed their economic and administrative functions down will be able to do little to protect themselves: Mozambique: Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak in Maputo Province

Tourism, conservation, environmental and other projects, all threatened by lockdowns: In Kenya, Maasai Entrepreneur Moves Conservancy Beyond Tourism Hit By Pandemic

Hardly surprising that food prices have rocketed. They are unlikely to drop anytime soon. Unlike most articles on the pandemic/response, this one identifies other pressures driving up food prices, all of which were there before Covid19, but are made a lot worse by the response: Food Prices in Nigeria Have Shot Through the Roof

If countries can’t get food locally, or import it from other countries because they can’t get around restrictions on movement and trade, they may end up depending on illicit trading, black markets and other threats to economic and political stability. The above list is from today’s AllAfrica.com newsletter, not at all exhaustive, unfortunately.

Many are now questioning the wisdom of rigid Covid19 responses urged on them by international institutions, NGOs, donors and foreign leaders. Tanzania is one of the only one to impose a modest lockdown with a viable exit plan. Other countries could soon follow their example. None can afford the millions shelled out by rich countries.

Covid-19 in Tanzania: Pursuit of Health Sovereignty?

2020-07-18T01:48:00.002+03:00

What’s the difference between Kenya’s response to Covid-19 and Tanzania’s? It’s difficult to know about Tanzania because journalistic practice dictates that if an African leader stands up to western leaders, experts or even mere bureaucrats or journalists, they must be slapped down, ridiculed and hounded for the remainder of their office for their temerity.

It’s not so difficult to find out about Kenya’s response: a curfew was imposed and violently enforced, many people were held (effectively, interned) in insanitary conditions, some were beaten and some died, children will remain out of school until next January, hospitals are said to be overwhelmed (aren’t they always?), there are restrictions on movement, shortages of food, etc.

In Tanzania, children were sent home for a few months, but people were encouraged to go to work, feed their families, take care of themselves so that they could take care of people who were not able to. Magufuli refused to go running to the international community for handouts earmarked for (well-behaved) African leaders.

Consequences from Kenya's response to Covid-19 are far more severe than those from the virus itself. Of course, Tanzania is going to have to face the consequences of the responses of countries around them, and the consequences of their trading partners’ respective responses; for example, there is already a massive drop in tourism, globally, something a lot of poor countries disproportionately depend on.

But perhaps the difference between Kenya’s and Tanzania’s response to the virus runs deeper than the daily struggle for basic things, such as food, habitation, education, healthcare and the rest. The BBC, in that sneering tone specially honed for Africans, have coupled Magufuli’s approach to Covid-19 with his objections to ‘imperialism’.

In fact, Magufuli objects to the likes of mining operators from rich countries granting his country a paltry 3%, quaintly referred to as ‘royalties’, of anything declared as a profit. He advises people to balance rich countries' 'giving' against what they take, which is not unreasonable. Or perhaps the BBC doesn't recognise imperialism that hasn't been branded as such by them?

While the Constitution of the World Health Organization states that “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”, their response to the virus appears to view health as the avoidance of certain pathogens deemed more catastrophic than others, pretty much at all costs. Tanzania, and all poor countries, have a lot more to worry about than Covid-19. (Don't we all?)

In their anxiety to depict Magufuli as an unworthy opponent of imperialism, an incapable leader of Tanzania and a generally uninformed person whose tenure verges on dictatorial (and I’m certainly not saying he’s faultless), many commentators have missed something important. Africa and Africans won’t be ‘rising’ when, or because the English Guardian or the BBC plasters it up in banner headlines.

Perhaps it will happen when leaders like Magufuli, human as he is, stand up to the sanctimony of the western media, the neo-imperialism of wealthy countries, and the complicity of the ‘international’ institutions they fund. But the difference between Kenya’s and Tanzania’s response? Tanzania refused to be cowed into overseeing a complete breakdown of the economy, of law and order; they even refused to take money to do what Kenya and other countries happily did.

It could be argued that Magufuli is striving for health sovereignty, which is, by definition, autonomous, unlike the top-down, one-size-fits-all ‘solutions’ that rich countries and their institutions are so keen for poor countries to adopt. At least, he seems to be highlighting a tension between the WHO’s definition of health and their approach to health emergencies, especially in poor countries (but not exclusively).

Much remains to be seen, but what Magufuli has done so far has resulted in a lot less harm than what Kenyatta has done, which is just more of the same. In contrast, Magufuli has stood up, with his people; he has refused to be goaded, and to be induced into handing over everything to rich countries and institutions. He refused to betray the Tanzanian people, refused the readies. How many other leaders, in Africa and elsewhere, can claim the same?

Tanzania and Covid-19: Some Accidental Truths?

2020-06-02T12:52:00.000+03:00

A British journalist based in Tanzania claims in The Spectator that the WHO is ‘concerned’ about the government’s lack of transparency during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing under the pen name ‘Tom James’, the journalist gives the impression that there is an extremely serious Covid-19 outbreak in the country, one that the government is refusing to address.

However, the story is undermined by the journalist’s description of how things are in Dar es Salaam, the country’s biggest city, during this outbreak. For a start, he admits that there is little or no evidence for any deepening crisis, but he continues to write as if the absence of evidence means things must be worse than the government says.

The journalist could return to Britain, although he chooses not to do so (because he wants to look after his dogs). But clearly, things are not so bad that he must leave; he’s got a job and a home; he has a car that he is still able to run, so no fuel shortages; he can go to the market to buy supplies, so no panic buying, hoarding or sudden spikes in prices of staples.

It sounds, if the journalist is to be believed, as if everyone there is just getting on with it. We get a description of normal, everyday life in Tanzania: the police are patrolling the highways, fining people for anything and nothing; a motorbike taxi with three passengers is on the road; only the driver has a mask, but no helmet; again, nothing unusual. What, I’d like to know, would ‘Tom James’ prefer?

The English Guardian claims that Tanzania’s president is undercounting cases and deaths. But the US is overcounting, something the Guardian seems oblivious of; so is the UK, and they are collecting records that cannot be reanalyzed, should anyone ever wish to know the true numbers of cases, deaths and excess deaths.

If President Magufuli is 'playing down' the threat of Covid-19, the US and the UK are talking it up (Norway is considering the possibility that their own lockdown was unnecessary).

The media frequently uses the word ‘authoritarian’ when referring to the Tanzanian president. So, what if Magufuli did impose a lockdown? Wouldn’t that be even more authoritarian than not doing so? In most African countries, people can’t just stop working, self-isolate at home, work from home, get their food delivered or hop in their car, unlike the more fortunate ‘Tom James’.

I doubt if he and others criticizing Magufuli would like to see Tanzania follow the example set by Kenya. Human Rights Watch describes a country completely unprepared to ‘isolate’ thousands of possible Covid-19 cases, as unprepared as all poor countries are.

In Kenya, people have been rounded up and held with numerous other people who may or may not have the virus. Even in the UK one doctor writes: "many patients acquired the infection while already hospitalised for other causes". Infection control in East African hospitals is not great; how much worse will it be in these temporary holding facilities in Kenya?

Kenya imposed a curfew early on in the pandemic and police have been beating people who break the curfew. But, as the Human Rights Watch article shows, conditions in the country don’t allow everyone to drop their normal routines and get home before 7. People can’t easily ‘socially distance’ in overcrowded slums, cramped public transport and other overstretched services.

An article in African Arguments describes just how authoritarian, and how destructive, the lockdown is in Kenya (although the same publication in April called for a lockdown in Tanzania).

Al Jazeera point out that opposition leaders in Tanzania accuse the government of lying about Covid-19 and of failing to address the crisis. But what country’s opposition doesn’t accuse their government of lying and of making unwise decisions? It’s an election year, and Magufuli wants to win, as does the opposition, and these phenomena are not peculiar to Tanzania, nor even to African countries.

Usually the first to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded building (and they have done plenty of shouting about Covid-19 in Tanzania), the BBC has a short piece entitled “Tanzanian doctors 'not overwhelmed by pandemic'.” (You need to page down a long way to find it. It's worth noting that the BBC’s content about Tanzania seems to depend heavily on contributions from the public, social media and other questionable sources.)

One of the worst things that can happen to poor countries during a pandemic is that people panic, as it can bring about the very conditions that will only deepen the crisis. 'Tom James' appears to want someone to shout 'fire', although he doesn't quite do it himself. But, however inadvertently, his article suggests that no one in Tanzania is listening to him or his media colleagues. Let’s hope that continues.

Why are the Majority of HIV Positive People African & Female?

2019-12-17T23:58:00.000+03:00

Could women's higher rates of access to healthcare account for higher rates of HIV in African countries, where unsafe healthcare is very common? Sex, unsafe or otherwise, is no more common in African countries than elsewhere.

The full sized version of this dashboard is here.

Antimicrobial Resistance and PrEP: Medical Disasters

2019-04-11T08:19:00.005+03:00

Here are two antimicrobial resistance (AMR) scenarios, one rapidly spiraling out of control, and the other (arguably) incipient:

The AMR scenario that is spiraling out of control is described in an article in The New York Times. The development of AMR is blamed on overuse and misuse of cheap antibiotics, usually without prescription. Ever-increasing use and misuse of antibiotics results in ever-increasing development of resistant strains of pathogens.

The NYT article describes the appalling conditions that an estimated one billion people live in; slums where waterborne, foodborne and airborne pathogens thrive. Unable to escape the risks, people try to treat the symptoms with antibiotics, inevitably leading to resistance to most or all available treatments.

The scenario described is a loop: widespread disease leads to overuse of antimicrobials; this leads to development of resistance; people with resistant conditions, if they survive, are taken to healthcare facilities, which also overuse antimicrobials, amplifying resistance and transmission of resistant strains; this loops back to the slum, resulting in an even higher disease burden, and greater levels of resistance.

The loop could be broken by: 1) improving the environment, including water, sanitation, habitation, food, etc and 2) improving conditions in healthcare facilities, infection control, safety, hygiene, etc. This will reduce antimicrobial use and, therefore, resistance.

The approach suggested by the Global AMR R&D Hub, on the other hand, risks speeding up the loop leading to AMR. They aim to “tackle the threat of resistant pathogens” by developing “new antibiotics and treatments against infections.” Producing antimicrobials of ever-increasing power, without addressing 1 and 2, above, only continues the cycle of ever-increasing resistance.

The other scenario is described on websites such as iwantprepnow.co.uk (and prepster.info and others). They advise on the use of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), antiretrovirals taken by HIV negative people to reduce the risk of HIV infection. For example, if "you have sex in a variety of situations where condoms are not easily used or not always used", PrEP, if properly used, can reduce risk of infection with HIV by more than 90%.

There are (at least) two problems with this. Firstly, overuse or incorrect use of antiretrovirals can give rise to a resistant strain of HIV developing in an infected person, and that resistant strain can also be transmitted to others.

Secondly, the advice from iwantprepnow.co.uk (and other similar sites, such as PrEPster.info) is aimed at people who frequently have sex without protection from other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Exposing yourself repeatedly to infection with STIs increases the development of resistant strains of, for example, gonorrhea, shigella and Mycoplasma genitalium.

Use of PrEP without condoms also increases transmission of hepatitis C virus: “Incidence of acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) among men who have sex with men who use PrEP in Lyon increased tenfold between 2016 and 2017”. HCV has doubled among HIV positive people.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies spectacularly fail to notice the positive feedback mechanism, whereby improper use of PrEP could increase transmission of STIs and the development of resistance in countries where HIV prevalence is highest, sub-Saharan African countries:

"In areas where there is so much HIV circulating, every sexual encounter is high risk, and widespread PrEP could be a prevention lynchpin." The same article even acknowledges that "High rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) increase the risk of HIV acquisition", without noticing how PrEP will increase STIs and resistance!

According to The WHO, health is a "State of complete physical, mental, and social well being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." In the two AMR scenarios described above, producing stronger antimicrobials and PrEP are examples of medicalization of health, viewing it as merely the absence of disease or infirmity. These kinds of medicalization will radically increase AMR.

Cherie Blair and ‘Rape in Africa’ Stereotypes

2019-04-09T15:00:00.004+03:00

Cherie Blair was accused of perpetuating and reinforcing stereotypes and usurping African voices with her comment that “most African ladies’ first sexual experience is rape”. The English Guardian and NPR both weigh in, with a number of reasons why Blair’s remarks were met with outrage.

Critics of Blair are not wrong in calling her out on these comments. But they don’t go far enough. Yes, Blair should have acknowledged, for example, that rape and gender based violence are faced by women everywhere, not just in African countries. But Blair is only repeating stereotypes she would find throughout the mainstream media, and in a lot of specialized published sources.

Blair is far from being alone in perpetuating and reinforcing stereotypes, such as those of the ‘promiscuous African’, ‘the violent African male’, ‘the widespread exchange of sex for money’, ‘the disempowered African female’, etc. Most of these stereotypes are a lot older than Blair, and date back to colonial times, at least.

Nor have the long-held stereotypes mellowed with age. The bulk of HIV programming (and spending) is based on the very assumption that “sexual transmission [is] the major mode of spread of HIV-1 in Africa”, with some estimates suggesting that sex accounts for 80-90% of all transmissions in high prevalence countries (which are all in sub-Saharan Africa).

On the subject of rape, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) claims that: “Girls and women [in South Africa] also face an epidemic of rape and gender-based violence; many young women express more concerns about getting raped or getting pregnant than getting HIV. At one site we visited, the girls stated that getting raped was their number one fear.”

CSIS was commenting on the fact that in some parts of South Africa, 60% of women are HIV positive. Many new infections are among girls 15-24 years old. However, the entire CSIS article assumes, without ever arguing for it, that all HIV transmission is sexual. This assumption may suggest that stereotypes such as those above are based on empirical findings, rather than being rank prejudice.

Far from being based on research, stereotypes about ‘African’ sexual behavior are flatly contradicted by vast quantities of data collected by Demographic and Health Surveys, every five years, about sexual behavior in African countries. Just select any sub-Saharan country; rates of ‘unsafe’ sexual behavior are low, and there is little or no correlation with HIV prevalence.

Cherie Blair is unlikely to have come across views that diverge from the mainstream prejudices about HIV in SSA, and that challenge those prejudices. But many of those challenges can be found, for example, in a paper by John Potterat, and in the bibliography for that paper. One of the main suspects in high rates of HIV transmission is unsafe healthcare; others are unsafe cosmetic and traditional practices.

If Blair would like to reconsider the sort of stereotypes about sexual behavior and violence also expressed in the CSIS article, this is a good time to do so. Those outraged by her comments about ‘Africans’ and their alleged sexual behavior may wish to avail of the same research. Otherwise they all risk reinforcing and perpetuating stereotypes.

Ebola: A Strategy of Misinformation?

2019-04-04T19:18:00.001+03:00

In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine entitled ‘An Epidemic of Suspicion — Ebola and Violence in the DRC’ Vinh-Kim Nguyen writes about violent attacks on Ebola treatment units and other health facilities. Nguyen argues that: "Epidemics thrive on fear — when they are frightened, patients flee hospitals, sick people stay away to begin with, and affected communities distrust groups trying to respond to the epidemic."

But there's an important sense in which the opposite may be true. When people fear something that has proven dangerous in the past, avoiding that something may be the only rational response, the only way to avoid the danger. After all, several well-documented epidemics have been shown to thrive on unsafe healthcare. Examples are Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), hepatitis C (HCV), extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) and MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

The second ever outbreak of EBV, which occurred in Yambuku (in Zaire) in 1976, was a result of unsafe healthcare: "Peter Piot...concluded that it was inadvertently caused by the Sisters of Yambuku Mission Hospital, who had given unnecessary vitamin injections to pregnant women in their prenatal clinic without sterilizing the needles and syringes."

WHO has recently announced that "The outbreak [of EBD] in Katwa and Butembo health zones [in DRC] is partly being driven by nosocomial [=originating in a hospital] transmission events in private and public health centres. Since 1 December 2018, 86% (125/145) of cases in these areas had visited or worked in a health care facility before or after their onset of illness. Of those, 21% (30/145) reported contact with a health care facility before their onset of illness, suggesting possible nosocomial transmission."

Globally, hepatitis C virus (HCV) has infected an estimated 130 million people.... [T]he wave of increased HCV-related morbidity and mortality that we are now facing is the result of an unprecedented increase in the spread of HCV during the 20th century. Two 20th century events appear to be responsible for this increase; the widespread availability of injectable therapies and the illicit use of injectable drugs. A significant healthcare associated outbreak occurred in Egypt in the 1970s.

Associated with poor infection control in health facilities, one of the first outbreaks of XDR-TB was discovered in Tugela Ferry Hospital, KZN, South Africa, in 2005. And a significant proportion of healthcare associated infections are resistant to methicillin (ie, MRSA).

Nguyen goes on: “In areas where the epidemic response has not involved security forces...people ask to be vaccinated.”

But rolling out vaccinations in environments where infection control is inadequate (for example, healthcare facilities) might increase the risk of viral strains developing resistance (for example, among healthcare practitioners). Going to a healthcare facility during an outbreak of Ebola may be the worst thing a person can do. When people didn’t go to health facilities during earlier outbreaks, case numbers were limited, and the outbreak didn’t last long.

Nguyen has also highlighted the importance of trust, and the consequences of mistrust of authority, experts and science. But if people are right to question the safety of healthcare facilities, as it would appear from above considerations, how can the trust of people at risk of exposure to ebola and other pathogens be regained?

As long as continued Ebola transmission is blamed on what is depicted as an irrational fear of healthcare and vaccinations, people will stay away from healthcare. Because their fear is far from irrational, it is supported by scholarly research, expert opinion and even communications from the WHO. XDR TB, MRSA, HCV and other outbreaks have been shown to be healthcare associated outbreaks. Healthcare facilities also contribute the lion’s share to anti-microbial resistance (AMR).

Modern healthcare facilities are potentially dangerous places. If patients were informed about the dangers, they would know better how to avoid them, and healthcare facilities would be compelled to address those dangers. Some of the earliest EBV outbreaks occurred when people came together around healthcare facilities, and died out when healthcare facilities closed, often because healthcare staff had been wiped out by Ebola.

Trust in healthcare in developing countries may be regained, slowly, if people are adequately informed about the greatest risks they face, such as poor infection control, lack of hygiene, AMR, etc. Trust will not be regained by dreaming up new misinformation, nor by reinforcing old misinformation.

Guardian: Another Fine Press Excess Mess

2019-02-12T21:47:00.000+03:00

If I wrote that health facilities may be contributing to the spread of diseases, such as Ebola (or HIV), I'd be accused of spreading scare stories. But because it's the English Guardian, and it's about sex in an African country, they can publish with impunity a story with the title 'Ebola vaccine offered in exchange for sex, say women in Congo'.

A quick read through the article shows that the title is wholly unmerited. And even the WHO has acknowledged that 86% of people infected with ebola in several hotspots have worked at or visited health centers recently. So the "deep mistrust of health workers" in the DRC may not be as misguided as the Guardian seems to suggest.

The Guardian continues: "Suspicion of authorities and health agencies has further hampered efforts to contain the response". The Guardian tends to avoid suggestions that suspicion of health agencies is ever justified. They prefer to point the finger at gender based violence, sex, bats, women, corpse touchers, anything to avoid the admission that ebola outbreaks cannot possibly be a simple matter of individual behavior, traditional practices, etc.

The article is not an isolated example of the Guardian's fantasies about exotic sexual behavior, occult practices, primitive people, violent men and hapless female and child victims, without power or agency. Another in the series had the title 'Women in sub-Saharan Africa forced into sex to pay hospital bills', based on research that did not warrant anything so salacious.

A third article in the Guardian screams "Girls are literally selling their bodies to get sanitary pads", which is a quote from a researcher more anxious to get publicity for her work than to address some very serious issues in developing countries. Read the research in question and you will not come away with the impressions that the Guardian would have us believe.

And a fourth claims that dating apps in Pakistan (a very low HIV prevalence developing country, where several outbreaks of healthcare associated HIV have been described) are leading to an increase in transmission rates (there is no evidence of any correlation, let alone a causal connection, it’s just speculation).

It's not just the English Guardian that plumbs the depths of tabloid journalism when it comes to 'Africa', nor are all the bizarre, not too credible and very badly researched issues always about sex. For example, some may remember reading articles about people on ARVs eating cow dung because they had no other food, in the BBC and elsewhere.

This story was repeated in a few other countries. Less attention was given to a woman who said she made up the story because she was told she would have to come up with something good in order to get money to buy food.

Other stories that seem belittling and (often obviously) untrue include one about men who have anal sex having to use adult diapers, people renting out used condoms and washing them before renting them out again, assumptions about 'African' sexuality (which can also be found on the BBC site, for example), etc.

Other news outlets that seem unable to resist trivial, belittling and often simply untrue stories about some African countries include IRIN (condom recycling), and Reuters, whose articles, like the BBC's, are often used to back up newspaper articles, or are syndicated in African newspapers.

Aside from being insulting and demeaning, especially to people from African countries and women, these stories deflect attention from extremely serious risks that people in developing countries face, such as unsafe healthcare (which has been shown to contribute to outbreaks of HIV, Ebola, TB, hepatitis C and others), lack of sanitary and reproductive health services and supplies, misuse of medicines and many others.

The consequences of such irresponsible reporting by some of the most trusted news outlets go far beyond the often trivial gossip that purports to be news. If healthcare facilities are unsafe, people should avoid them, especially if authorities (and the press) try to cover up and lie about the risks, at least until healthcare associated outbreaks of deadly conditions are investigated and addressed adequately.

But if unsafe healthcare is deadly, so is the press that lies about it, the press that slings muck at anyone who dares to suggest that ‘professionals’ don't always know best, the press that loves to brand people as 'denialists' if they don't fall in with whatever is currently fashionable in 'expert opinion'.

Tanzania: Some Alternatives to Orphanages

2018-08-11T17:00:00.001+03:00

In a previous blog I concluded that “Long-term residential accommodation will not provide the child with the conditions they need to develop”, and this view is shared by many people and organizations working in child protection in Tanzania. But it would be a mistake to conclude that current practices can cease without being certain of which alternative strategies can be developed to care for vulnerable children, and avoid separating them from their families.

I don’t claim to be an expert in the field of child protection, and what I have written below is based on a relatively small amount of research and inquiry. I make it available in case it is useful to others doing similar or overlapping work.

I briefly outline a number of alternatives, in no particular order. Some of these activities are already being carried out by NGOs in Tanzania or elsewhere; others are in need of further inquiry; some of them may be practiced but I have not found any details yet (this is just informal research!). The list is by no means exhaustive:

1. Child protection monitoring is lacking in the Tanzanian social welfare system; there are probably too few social welfare officers, with too few skills; more importantly, residential care seems to be one of the few options they consider whenever child protection is involved; many social services are provided by private bodies and there is little that is available nationally
2. Mental health issues in mothers and other family members need to be addressed, especially post natal depression; mental health issues are a common reason cited for children being in institutions, and other research shows that post natal depression is rarely diagnosed, let alone treated
3. Maternal health issues: health problems during pregnancy, delivery and in the months after giving birth are numerous; maternal morbidity and mortality rates are very high in Tanzania; care for the mother must not exclude appropriate care for the child, especially if they are separated; care for the child must involve continued contact with their family
4. Newborn health issues: birth defects, disabilities, developmental problems and doubtless many preventable and/or treatable conditions are common; infant and under 5 mortality very high in Tanzania; where this results in the child being separated from the mother or carer the care must be monitored so that the child is reunited as quickly as possible, and does not lose touch with the family at any time
5. Infant feeding and support for mother/carer/family is an important intervention that has been implemented in various forms in Tanzania for a long time, both large and small scale programs; but this needs to be available to all children, if required; timely programs have prevented a lot of separations of children from their mother/carer, and continue to do so
6. Support and acknowledgement for carers; sometimes the nominated carer has a very low status (social status, legal status, etc) in the family and is not considered to have an integral connection with the child’s welfare; there’s little point in the child bonding with a carer who will soon disappear, to be replaced by another carer, who may have a similarly low status
7. Home support for children with special needs; rare in Tanzania to find any kind of support for children with special needs or their carers; what is available is generally provided by NGOs and other private providers
8. Respite care for carers; such care may be provided by some NGOs but it is rare; informal respite care can be provided by relatives and friends/neighbors but this can carry serious risks, and many carers are completely isolated and without support of any kind
9. Daycare facilities; several NGOs are providing daycare facilities but these are mainly ‘supply driven’, and arise when there is a provider willing to build and run them; being able to send young children to daycare facilities would allow mothers/carers to work without having to worry about leaving their children in riskier circumstances, or leaving them with young siblings, who will then have to miss school
10. Foster care, formal, informal, long and short term; informal foster care is and has been common in Tanzania for a long time, although there is little recognition of the word or concept; there is legislation covering formal foster care but it doesn’t seem to be used much; social welfare tend to be reluctant to try out ‘new’ things
11. Family centered support in the home, eg, financial support, especially where there are indications of poverty, neglect, abuse; families are expected to provide care for children, even children of relatives, also old people, people with special needs, etc; yet many families live in poverty and isolation from healthcare, education and infrastructure; nothing is free when you have no income, so ‘free’ school and healthcare, for example, still involve costs that families struggle to meet, or fail to meet
12. Facilities that care for couples, infant/child and mother/carer, when required; rather than separating infants from mothers or carers in the event of sickness or death, providing facilities that allow them to remain together would significantly increase the child’s chances of thriving and even surviving, and also reduce the risk of separation
13. Specialist facilities for children who can't be at home; special needs often cannot be addressed adequately at home; sometimes a child has so many needs that the family can’t provide that they must spend some time in a specialist facility; but there needs to be better provision for keeping children in touch with their family if they are separated; at present, maintaining contact between children and families is down to the individual provider
14. Support for childless families, those who have experienced loss, stillbirths, etc; fostering and adoption by Tanzania families should be addressed and those who have lost a child, or families who are childless, are often interested in considering caring for a child who has been separated from their family and cannot return
15. Support for facilities reuniting children with families; generally, once a child has been placed in a facility, little effort is made to consider reuniting them with their family; often, families don’t even visit children once they are in a facility; reuniting them with their families can involve a lot of negotiation and logistics that facilities cannot afford, but reuniting them should always be the first concern for facilities and others working with child protection
16. Working with fathers/birthing partners, to encourage women to consider not being alone during delivery and the days after birth; programs that focus on infants, children or women can effectively exclude men, even antagonize them; working with fathers during pregnancy and birth is only one way of including them and could have a significant impact on the tendency to place children in orphanages; working with fathers to understand and negotiate how they can support their partner through pregnancy and delivery and the early months (putting it prosaically, mothers are often afraid of healthcare professionals, but healthcare professionals are often afraid of fathers who turn up to support their partners!)
17. Investigate cases of 'abandonment' and other instances of children being separated; this is a legal/administrative issue that can be very vague when cited as a reason for referring a child to an orphanage; it’s difficult to ‘abandon’ a child without a lot of people knowing about it, so claims of abandonment should be treated with greater caution
18. Investigate cases attributed to 'alcoholism', as some of them may be something entirely different, or something treatable, but that drives the alcoholism; the term ‘alcoholic’ can be applied to anyone who drinks, especially when applied to a woman; some residential facilities are funded by churches that preach against even the slightest association with alcohol
19. Follow up HIV and TB infected children to find out why they are in facilities, where they often cannot benefit from funded programs that are available for those conditions; chronic conditions can prove difficult for families to deal with, but many children are successfully cared for at home, given the right support
20. Investigate cases attributed to 'abuse' to ensure that there is not some other treatable cause that has been categorized as abuse; families are generally reluctant to discuss abuse openly, so it must be questioned when it is used as a reason for admitting a child to an orphanage; of course, abuse does occur, and there are legitimate reasons for children to be separated from their family, and possibly referred to a facility, a foster family, etc
21. Investigate children for whom there is no identifiable reason for their being in a facility, no problem with the child, no problem with the mother/carer/parents/family; if a child is in a facility and no one is visiting them, they can be left without anyone considering their future care; facilities often don’t have the resources to regularly review children’s care plan and social welfare tend to leave such matters to the facility
22. Promotion of Early Childhood Education where this is not available; many children go to school late for various reasons and this can make it difficult for them to catch up; sending children to appropriate education institutions must become the norm; being in daycare or early schooling is preferable to being at home alone, in the care of young siblings or in the care of people who are neither trained nor motivated to look after the child
23. Promotion of inclusive education in public schools; sometimes the smallest reason can be used for delaying a child’s start at school, such as a very minor impairment or disability; for example, there’s no reason for most children with albinism to stay at home; some children out of school have special needs that can be met at state schools, preferably with appropriate measures where the special needs are more acute; waiting until an institution that can provide for special needs is identified, or until the child is older and can more easily access such an institution, leads to long delays
24. There are tools such as the 'Child Development and Monitoring Tool' (from the Suryakanti Foundation), which can help identify, treat and even prevent some conditions that give rise to children having special needs; special needs can include developmental, behavioral, learning, impairments, etc, so it’s important to accurately identify what needs a child has as early as possible

There are many alternatives to ‘orphanages’ and ways of preventing separation of children from their family. But it will be a harder job to assess the needs of every child currently in an institution and reunite them with their family, or care for them more appropriately, than it was to refer them to the institution in the first place. The challenge is to follow Tanzania’s Law of the Child Act to the letter: an orphanage should always be a last resort, and it should not be seen as a permanent solution.

The majority of Tanzanian families are poor, a lot are living below the poverty line, unemployed, unskilled and isolated from services they need to change things for themselves. Orphanages and NGOs, donors and sponsors have long been seen as a lifeline, a way of getting one or more children cared for and educated, perhaps so that they can do more for their family later. If resources and funding are to be reduced in one area of child protection, they must be redeployed elsewhere.

But the proliferation of orphanages in a region such as Arusha has merely led to the expectation that more and more orphanage places will be provided. And children will continue to be referred to orphanages as long as a justification that is acceptable to social welfare can be found. Support, funding and sponsorship need be redeployed in ways that avoid separating families.

This is a working document and it will continue to be developed if people make contributions, comments, criticisms, etc. Thank you in advance!

Why Watoto Kicheko Orphanage is now closed

2018-08-03T16:23:00.003+03:00

Supporters and followers of Watoto Kicheko Orphanage will have heard that we are now closed, and we are not admitting any more children. Although there were some big challenges over the four years Watoto Kicheko was open there was only one reason why we closed: the children all had somewhere else to go; most of them (about three quarters) were reunited with their own families. A small number were adopted (4), or were placed in facilities that can best provide for their specific circumstances (3).

Out of 36 children admitted over a four year period, only about 19 probably needed to spend some time in a residential facility. About 7 of them probably needed to stay for a year or more. But about 17 had no convincing reason for being in a residential facility. About 29 out of 36 should have left the facility sooner than they did, and some of them should have left far sooner. Sadly, three of the children died while under the care of the orphanage. No child was ever admitted on the grounds that both parents had died.

A number of children were admitted because they were in urgent need of care, sometimes medium to longer term care. And a few would certainly not be alive today if they had not received the treatment and care they got while they were staying at Watoto Kicheko. For this, we owe a debt of gratitude to the staff of Watoto Kicheko, specialists and staff at Selian Hospital (ALMC), staff from a number of other facilities and a whole host of others who visited, gave advice and assistance, supported us in various ways, sent money, gifts and the like.

The Tanzanian Law of the Child Act is clear that orphanages should be a last resort, once every other option has been considered. For a long time now, orphanages seem to have been treated as the go to place for children. Many of the children, and sometimes their parents or carers, have needs that can be provided without the child being separated from their family. Once a child has been separated, for whatever reason, it can be difficult to reunite them. Being separated from their family is a significant harm in itself, aside from the many risks children in care face. The practice of placing children in orphanages when they have no need to be separated from their family must stop.

Of course, there are situations when a child may need to be separated from a parent, carer, or even their family. Sometimes it is not possible for a child to return to a family member, or even to the family. Caring for children in such circumstances is difficult, as anyone involved in child protection knows. But even urgent measures that need to be taken, emergencies, situations where there are clear risks for the child, etc, must also include a strategy for keeping the child in contact with a carer, someone who will stay close to the child, at least until their future is clear.

Long-term residential accommodation will not provide the child with the conditions they need to develop. Neither disability nor poverty are valid reasons for denying children a family life. If you are involved in researching or working with forms of non-residential care for children, reuniting children who have been in care, alternatives to orphanages and strategies for keeping families together in Tanzania, I would love to hear from you: Simon Collery – collery [at] gmail.com

A Minor Revelation Short of a Pulitzer

2018-06-12T16:52:00.000+03:00

Steven Thrasher has made the fascinating discovery that many of the HIV positive, gay men in the US are not white, and he regularly reveals this to "incredulous audiences".

If he enjoys sharing this so much, perhaps he'd be interested to know that most HIV positive people in some of the country's southern states are heterosexual and female, as well as black.

Indeed, the majority of HIV positive people in the world are black and heterosexual; and a majority of those black HIV positive heterosexuals are female.

Even though the majority of new HIV infections are among men who have sex with men in the US, HIV prevalence is 7 times higher among African Americans than it is among white Americans.

So HIV among men who have sex with men is, to a large extent, a result of sexual behavior. And HIV among people who inject druts is, to a large extent, a result of reusing injecting equipment.

But HIV among heterosexuals is much less likely to be a result of unsafe sex. Even among men who have sex with men, it's receptive anal sex that carries the highest risk.

Thrasher laments American art imagining Aids as white and in the past. Yet, imagining it as black, gay, western and in the present fails to include the vast majority of HIV positive people: they are black, heterosexual females, from developing countries; and sexual behavior is unlikely to conform to the common stereotypes of 'African' sexuality, either.

Where to Put Sidibe's Deckchair?

2018-04-01T13:29:00.000+03:00

It's only two weeks since Michel Sidibe publicly threatened UNAIDS employees ungrateful enough to speak out about sexual and other misconduct by their colleagues. But the media has remained silent. Even the English Guardian, who ran the article, and refers to Sidibe's speech as 'bizarre' in the title, has had nothing further to say about it.

The article appears in the Gates funded 'Global Development' section of the newspaper and the following text appears on the same page: "Women's rights and gender equality - This series highlights issues affecting women, girls and transgender people. It is supported by the Ford Foundation, Mama Cash and the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID). It is editorially independent." (I especially like the last bit).

The Inner City Press has tried to break the silence. They are a small media outlet which has tried to raise the issue, but has been stonewalled by UN officials. In fact, the same organization has been banned from covering UN affairs and from attending press conferences and similar events. For a time, Google removed Inner City Press from their news, allegedly after pressure from the UN, although this was later reversed.

The Inner City Press has a long history of questioning the UN, which shouldn't be surprising in a media outlet. But they have now demonstrated how quickly the UN clams up when certain questions are asked, questions that the rest of the media seems to have agreed not to raise. (There's a Change.org petition to have Inner City's access to the UN restored).

According to a Guardian article in 2012 a "reporter who works for a small investigative news site, Inner City Press, is in danger of being ejected from the UN correspondents association (UNCA) at the behest of journalistic colleagues." This refers to Matthew Lee, founder of Inner City Press.

Sidibe and UNAIDS seem to have shifted considerably from the UN Charter's call for respect for human rights, and the world's media don't appear to be too bothered, either. Perhaps this is what the Gates, Ford, Rockefeller and other foundations, whose names appear alongside so many worthy initiatives, are paying for.

Sidibe: I Say What’s Ethical

2018-03-17T16:52:00.004+03:00

In 2010 a BBC article reported: “HIV has become the leading cause of death and disease among women of reproductive age worldwide”. We are told that “One of the key issues… is that up to 70% of women worldwide have been forced to have unprotected sex. UNAids says such violence against women must not be tolerated.”

UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe is quoted as saying: "By robbing them of their dignity, we are losing the opportunity to tap half the potential of mankind to achieve the Millennium Development Goals" and “Women and girls are not victims, they are the driving force that brings about social transformation”. So I assume his objection to forced sex is not just related to the risk of HIV.

But when a senior UNAIDS officer resigns after allegations of sexual harassment and assault, Sidibe weighs in with an attack on ‘whistleblowers’ who made the allegations, saying they “lack ethics and morals”. He also praised the accused official as ‘courageous’ for resigning. The official was not charged with any offence.

Even if the accused, Luiz Loures, was innocent, Sidibe seems to be attacking those who try to report instances of violence against women, protecting those who are accused, and turning a blind eye to those who abuse and pillory the ‘whistleblowers’ (who are really just people reporting a serious crime, but in a specific context, the workplace).

Sidibe has accused a former colleague who spoke out against the behavior of Luiz Loures of lying. These victims of Sidibe’s vicious attacks on anyone who dares to criticize UNAIDS are, effectively, accused of biting the hand that feeds them, a typical response of institutionally sexist institutions that have managed to repress criticism of this kind of behavior for decades.

But these matters have gone way past institutional sexism. Sidibe’s intention is clearly to bully and threaten anyone who wants to work for UNAIDS, but would object to being sexually assaulted, and would report it and fight it.

“We know there are people taking their golden handshake from us here and knowing that they have a job and then attacking us. We know all about that. We know every single thing. Time will come for everything. When I hear anything about abuse of our assets, abuse of our things, I ask for investigation. Maybe these investigations are going on.”

UNAIDS has produced a 5 point plan “to prevent and address all forms of harassment for greater accountability and transparency”, the second point of which is “an open platform will be created for staff to report on harassment, abuse of authority or unethical behaviour within the organization”. But it sounds very much like those who report such things would ‘lack ethics and morals’, in Sidibe’s view.

It seems clear enough that Sidibe is more concerned about protecting UNAIDS funding, the institution itself and the top jobs than about fighting harassment and forced sex. But I don’t think it’s possible to reconcile the seemingly contradictory positions Sidibe is taking. On the one hand he defends women “forced to have unprotected sex”; on the other he attacks those raising concerns about serious sexual misconduct.

Almost Positive: HIV Transmission Modes

2018-02-08T15:01:00.002+03:00

Yet another study delves into the socio-economic, behavioral, biomedical and sexual lives of young girls, this time in Malawi. The study identifies 15 factors said to relate, directly or indirectly, to HIV transmission. But yet again, all HIV transmission is assumed to be sexual, all risks are assumed to be risks of sexual transmission, and no non-sexual risks or modes of transmission are considered. (If the link doesn’t work there is an abstract on PubMed).

One of the hopes is that those selling pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) will be able to ‘target’ people thought to be most at risk of being infected. However, there is little point in targeting those who are not at risk, or even those who don’t believe they are at risk. Pre-exposure prophylaxis doesn’t work if people don’t take it frequently enough, and those who don’t believe they face any risk are unlikely to take it at all.

A scatter-gun approach would be very expensive and wouldn’t be very effective. But an approach that ‘targets’ people merely on the basis that they are sexually active is in danger of becoming a scatter-gun approach. So, on the one hand, this study (like many others) shows that most people don’t engage in the kinds of behavior said to carry a high risk of HIV infection (and many who do engage in them remain HIV negative).

But on the other hand, this study fails to acknowledge that the assumption that all risk is, directly or directly, related to sexual risk, is completely unwarranted. It is concluded that PrEP can be ‘targeted’ at women who are at risk, but that more work will need to be done to convince these women that they are at risk, and that that risk is either directly or indirectly sexual. (There’s a favorable commentary on the article on AidsMap.com).

Another study takes up the question of whether most transmission is sexual and, therefore, whether most risk is in some sense sexual risk. It does so by considering similarities among HIV genetic sequences, in order to identify possible sexual links. This study finds that only a small minority of clusters of sequences have identifiable sexual links.

This study goes on to note that there is plenty of useful data available: tens of thousands of people in African countries were followed and thousands of new infections were observed among them, but less than 10% of these were attributable to sexual transmission; also, there have been numerous HIV outbreaks outside of Africa which have been a result of unsafe healthcare (all are documented on this site). Yet, none have been investigated in Africa.

This is not such good news for PrEP, because non-sexually transmitted HIV is likely to be better addressed in other ways. But it could be great news for people in high prevalence countries. Sexual behavior and its determinants are notoriously difficult to influence, but conditions in healthcare facilities should prove more tractable. In addition, people need to be made aware of the non-sexual HIV risks so that they can avoid them, at least until conditions in healthcare facilities are improved.

Sexual Stereotyping and Relative Discomfort

2018-01-17T16:59:00.003+03:00

In an article about a nightclub in the south of England, where couples can go one night a month so that the woman can have sex with black men while their male partner watches, Afua Hirsch is not so much concerned about the behavior of the clubbers as she is about the sexual stereotyping and racist assumptions that go with the concept of a ‘Black Man’s Fan Club’.

Someone accompanying the author objects to the fetishization of black men and women that she experiences when she goes to swingers events, elsewhere. Another woman finds that, while many black men have relationships with white women, black women tend to be ignored, by white and black men.

The article mentions sexual stereotypes about male and female black people and some of the problems this can give rise to, noting assumptions about black women having ‘voracious sexual appetites’ and the men being well endowed, dominant, having ‘better rhythm’, etc. It is suggested that even some black people, especially men, buy into this ‘hypersexuality myth’.

Without wishing to diminish the importance of highlighting this crude sexual stereotyping of ‘African’ sexuality and sexual behavior in rich countries, I’m surprised that the author doesn’t take the article in the direction of some of the, arguably, more serious consequences of this kind of ‘exceptionalism’.

For example, most HIV transmission in rich countries, such as the US, is found among men who have sex with men; a smaller proportion is a result of reusing injecting equipment by intravenous drug users. Among heterosexuals, transmission is far lower. But in high HIV prevalence African countries the bulk of transmission is among people who neither engage in male to male sex, nor inject drugs.

Extremely high rates of transmission in certain parts of sub-Saharan Africa are attributed to this same set of assumptions about ‘African’ sexuality. We are told stories of vicious, predatory males having frequent and reckless sex with women who are depicted at times as being innocent victims, but at other times as having an amazing sexual appetite.

Even articles that need not mention sexual behavior, or need not concentrate on it almost exclusively, often do so when the context is a high HIV prevalence African country. For example, a study about women being held in hospitals until bills are paid makes brief mention of a claim that someone had sex with a doctor to help cover her bills. But an entire newspaper article about the report revolved around that claim.

Another newspaper article pathologizes sexual behavior in Uganda by depicting it as the main reason for the extremely high rates of HIV transmission there. While the risk of being infected with HIV is much higher in Uganda than in most other countries, sexual behavior there is unremarkable, with a few people engaging in a lot of sex, but most people not doing so.

Another example, although there are plenty around, of sexual behavior being exceptionalized and pathologized in African countries is an article about 15 year old girls ‘selling their bodies to buy sanitary pads’. A very small number of 15 year old girls surveyed made the connection between transactional sex and sanitary pads, but the newspaper article revolves around the claim.

Afua Hirsch is right about this racial stereotyping being demeaning, insulting and completely unacceptable, whether in a predominantly white and rich country or in a non-white and poor country. It could be argued, however, that the extent of racial stereotyping about sexuality and sexual behavior in the latter contexts is far more profound, even that it is dehumanizing. Or is it less remarkable because it’s ‘over there’ and not ‘right here’?

Guardian Angles: Forced Sex to Pay Hospital Bills?

2017-12-11T16:04:00.000+03:00

Chatham House has published a paper entitled 'Hospital Detentions for Non-payment of Fees: A Denial of Rights and Dignity', the title being a good indication of what the article is about, and why a leading think-tank concerned with international affairs would research and report on such an issue.

The practice of detaining patients in the grounds of a hospital until they pay their bills, with costs continuing to rise to cover their period of detention, is widespread in developing countries. Many people in those countries see it is unremarkable, even though it infringes on the rights and threatens the health of the poorest and most vulnerable.

Relatively little research has been carried out, so the above paper suggests that its findings represent only a fraction of the severity and breath of the issue. But people can be subjected to all kinds of abuse while being held, aside from the abuse of being detained in appalling conditions.

They can be denied vital health services, forced to live in inhumane and uninhabitable surroundings, subjected to physical, verbal and emotional abuse, without access to assistance or advice, without even the realization that healthcare establishments do not have the right to detain them in the first place.

However, the details given in the Chatham House report do not justify the headline 'Women in sub-Saharan Africa forced into sex to pay hospital bills'. The report does list an allegation that patients have "been pressured into having sex with hospital staff in exchange for cash to help pay their bills", also an allegation about "baby-trafficking".

The Chatham House report links to what sounds like a very tenuous source for some of its findings, but they also refer to such items as 'allegations', as distinct from better supported findings.

The newspaper article also cites several questionable assertions, including one about women having sex with 'doctors' for a few dollars to pay off bills that amounted to thousands of dollars, but without flagging up the potentially low credibility of the source.

The newspaper article fits into a pattern of tabloid-style articles citing sources that ostensibly support their title and following assertions; yet, when you look at their sources, these turn out to give little or no support whatsoever. It's as if the article was published because it could say what the editor wanted to publish, rather than report what the journalist found.

For example, an earlier article from the same newspaper about giving aid in the form of cash transfers is written as if this was found to be one of the most effective ways of providing assistance, but citing a report that came to the opposite conclusion.

The author of the hospital detentions article recently wrote about HIV in the Himalayas, saying that she found that it was all the fault of the men, and that the women just had to put up with it. The men were 'migrant workers', who 'lied' about how they could have been exposed to HIV, and the woman remained silent, we are told.

And another article in that newspaper blames a rise in HIV transmission on 'dating apps', because 'every app is a dating app', according to the title. Perhaps this is an instance of what the New York Times refers to as 'techno-moral' panic, which can take anything currently fashionable, 'cyberporn' in the 90s, chat-rooms not long after that, sexting, online predators, etc, and vent their indignation.

Remarkably, the article about dating apps purported to be about HIV in Pakistan, which is in the lowest quintile for HIV prevalence, globally. Although newspapers cling to the view that HIV is almost always a result of 'unsafe' sex, in Pakistan (and most other countries) there is ample evidence that there have been outbreaks caused by unsafe healthcare in some of the highest prevalence areas, as well as in some low prevalence countries (Pakistan, Cambodia, etc).

These journalist are happy to wallow in their favorite fantasies about ‘African’ sexual behavior, dating apps, transactional sex, trafficking and the like, almost as if they have to make up the story before an even less reliable source does so.

At the same time, they distract attention from much more serious, but far less media friendly issues, without contributing anything to the problems that they claim to be drawing attention to in the first place, at least by highlighting topics that have been missed so far, but are in serious need of attention.

‘African’ Sexuality: Colonial Trope or New Racism?

2017-11-26T13:58:00.002+03:00

An article entitled ‘Colonial tropes and HIV/AIDS in Africa: sex, disease and race’ discusses the “idea of Africa as a place where health and general well-being are determined by culturally (and to a degree racially) dictated modes of sexual behaviour that fall well outside of the ‘ordinary’”. It raises some welcome questions about the claim that HIV is almost all caused by heterosexual behavior, but only in ‘Africa’.

The authors continue: “By analysing historical responses to these two pandemics [syphilis and other STIs on the one hand and HIV on the other], we demonstrate an arguably unbroken outsider perception of African sexuality, based largely on colonial-era tropes, that portrays African people as over-sexed, uncontrolled in their appetites, promiscuous, impervious to risk and thus agents of their own misfortune.”

This blog, and a small number of people writing about HIV in African countries, share Flint and Hewett’s disgust for “the promulgation of the European idea of African men as over-sexed and, by implication, predatory and dangerous and African women as over-sexed, promiscuous and shameless”. But the HIV bigwigs do not apologize for institutionalizing such prejudices, and never have.

While Thabo Mbeki was disingenuous to claim that HIV does not cause AIDS, Flint and Hewitt support his claim that “the outsider view of Africans remains one of people who are ‘diseased, corrupt, violent, amoral [and] sexually depraved’”. The HIV industry has a tendency to brand anything they see as questioning their rigid stance as ‘denialist’. Mbeki’s questions remain unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, by an industry that refuses to apply scientific methods in a region where the overwhelming majority of HIV positive people live.

Flint and Hewitt continue: “HIV/AIDS discourse can be seen to have slotted into an existing colonial narrative of the mysterious, unknowable and, above all, different, that was primed to accept the notion of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa as a ‘disease of choice’ (with corresponding notions as to combating this perceived choice) – in remarkable contrast to ideas as to HIV/AIDS epidemiology and prevention outside the continent” [my emphasis].

The industry had to tone down their notions of ‘good AIDS/bad AIDS’ in western countries; fashions change (or 'are changed'). But it was (almost) all ‘bad AIDS’ in ‘African’ countries, all someone’s own fault, all ‘avoidable’, if people would just follow advice to abstain, be faithful, avoid ‘traditional’ practices, embrace western style healthcare (albeit without western standards of safety, hygiene, funding or staffing).

The attitude towards HIV in ‘African’ countries was especially reinforced by massive sources of funding, such as PEPFAR, “a programme influenced by and largely delegated to faith-based organisations, which engendered it, at times, with something of a crusading missionary outlook. Its emphasis on abstinence and fidelity suggested strongly that each person was broadly responsible for their own individual ‘salvation’: to be infected with HIV implied moral slippage”.

Flint and Hewitt have squeezed a lot into a paper that covers so many issues, spread over a long period. However, I think they have neglected a few things that might have altered their conclusion, considerably. Firstly, they mention (in a footnote) David Gisselquist’s contention that the HIV pandemic could not have been caused by sexual behavior alone, and that unsafe healthcare practices might explain a significant proportion, perhaps even a larger proportion than sexual behavior.

With the realization that the pandemic could not have been caused entirely by ‘African’ sexual behavior, isn’t there an immediate and urgent question about what else may have been involved? Reference is made to the preponderance of epidemiologists and other interested parties with their snouts in the trough, but the sheer weakness of the evidence for this assumed ‘African’ sexual behavior must also be examined. Epidemiologists have made it clear that they are certainly not going to revise their views and consider unsafe healthcare, or anything else.

Secondly, I would also question Flint and Hewett’s claim that the line running from colonial bigotry about sexual behavior in Africa to today’s HIV industry’s institutionalized racist narrative of the HIV pandemic is ‘unbroken’ (and they do say ‘arguably’). The vitriolic hatred shown by people writing about sexually transmitted infections, ‘African’ sexuality and many other subjects was clear enough in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, continuing up to WWII, at least. But, I would argue, things changed.

There was a phase of gradual enlightenment among writers of medical papers in the three or four decades preceding the identification of HIV as the virus responsible for AIDS. Flint and Hewitt even cite an early paper from one of those whose views were based on his own research in African countries, Richard Robert Willcox [obituary]; and there were others who brought greater humanity to ‘colonial’ medicine, which had previously been viewed as just another instrument of control. One example from Willcox will have to suffice for now.

Far from blaming STIs entirely on those who contracted them and transmitted them, Willcox and some of his contemporaries wrote that there are promiscuous people everywhere, and that STIs are mainly found among promiscuous people. But they also made it clear that the majority of people are not promiscuous; several of them might even have admitted that people in Africa were no more likely to be promiscuous than people elsewhere, which is anathema to the HIV industry.

Thirdly, Flint and Hewitt don’t mention that many earlier estimates of diseases, assumed to be sexually transmitted, were distorted by the inability to distinguish non-sexually transmitted yaws and other diseases from syphilis. Figures purporting to show massive levels of endemic syphilis were not just exaggerated by the eugenicists, they were also empirically incorrect. Willcox knew that, as did many of his contemporaries.

Outbreaks of STIs could also be explained by poor treatment programs, insanitary living conditions, labor conditions (especially in mines, armies, etc), resistance to medication, shortages in supplies, unsafe conditions in healthcare facilities, changes in epidemic patterns, lack of skills among personnel involved, shortages of skilled personnel, etc. Outbreaks of HIV could also be explained by such factors, if only more epidemiologists would accept that there is no disease that has a single cause, a cause entirely isolated from all other determinants of health, and that this unprecedented circumstance can only be found in certain African countries (a fifth of 'Africans' live in a region where HIV positive people make up 0.06% of the population).

Numerous factors involved in STI epidemics, only a some of which are mentioned above, were recognized by many pre-HIV era writers. Therefore, those blaming disease outbreaks on ‘promiscuity’ and other ‘African’ behaviors, were bigots, not badly informed commentators. Some time after WWII, ‘colonial’ views about ‘African’ sexual behavior, at least in medical literature, became less common. It took a few decades, of course. But by the 1980s, when AIDS was recognized as a syndrome and HIV was identified as the cause, unbigoted views were frequently expressed about STIs and ‘Africans’.

The extreme views of today’s HIV industry are not, I would argue, a clear continuation of colonial bigotry. Following three to four decades of increasing scientific rigor (and decreasing institutional racism), the emerging HIV industry of the 1980s had to develop its own form of racism. Many of the earliest proponents had little or no connection with the colonial past, although they adopted several of its more egregious ‘tropes’, being compatible with some of the extreme political and social attitudes also emerging at the time.

It's the Truth, Bill, But Not as We Know It

2017-11-20T17:05:00.004+03:00

"Aid given in cash improves health and spurs school attendance, say researchers", according to a title in the English Guardian. "Foreign aid in the form of cash transfers with no strings attached can improve health and increase school attendance, a study has found", claims the article. Yet, the conclusion of the study is "The evidence on the relative effectiveness of UCTs [unconditional cash transfers] and CCTs [conditional cash transfers] remains very uncertain".

The author, Hannah Summers, has been mentioned in a blog post here on the subject of racism, HIV and pathologizing sex, and then in a double take on the same set of issues. On the subject of cash transfers, she writes as if her job, or her newspaper's future, depend on spinning this hyped strategy, which has been claimed to reduce poverty, influence behavior, improve health, and just about everything desirable you can think of.

No mention is made in the Guardian about quality of evidence gathered by the study, which, in this instance, is astonishing: "Of the seven prioritised primary outcomes, the body of evidence for one outcome was of moderate quality, for three outcomes of low quality, for two outcomes of very low quality, and for one outcome, there was no evidence at all."

This is not to say that handing out money to poor people had no discernable benefits. People with more money can, and often do increase spending on things like food, medicine, education, living conditions and a better environment (if cash transfers were ever to reach such dizzy heights).

So it is no big surprise that people with more money, spending more on the above, will have fewer illnesses, improved food security, and perhaps dietary diversity, school attendance, etc. Nor is it a surprise that these improvements can lead to other improvements, given time and persistence.

But is it necessary to carry out 21 studies, involving over a million participants and over 30,000 households to know that poor people need money, and that having more money will have health, education, social, environmental and other benefits?

Is Summers entitled to claim that: "a review published this week flies in the face of criticism from the anti-aid brigade, showing that cash handouts have measurable benefits for some of the world’s poorest people." Is someone ‘anti-aid’ because they question her spin on this charade?

At times, cash transfers look like a form of pimping. International NGOs and other recipients of funding for cash transfers take a big slice for themselves. Academics get grants for the inevitable studies, some consultants and experts depend on this kind of work for much of their (considerable) income, lots of well paid people are well paid by these 'initiatives'.

Just in case the similarity to pimping is not clear, cash transfers have been used to induce people, mainly women and girls, to have less sex, to only engage in protected sex, to go to school (said to reduce sex, or ‘unsafe’ sex), etc. If paying for sex is, at least in part, an attempt to control a woman's sexual or reproductive choices, then so is paying for chastity.

If aid programs in their current forms are working, and need to be expanded, particularly certain types of aid program, why lie about the findings of a systematic review that explicitly questions conditional and unconditional cash transfers, and why would the English Guardian publish this obvious perversion of the findings of a Cochrane Review?

The Story is Father to the Author

2017-11-14T16:55:00.000+03:00

The story of 'How HIV found its way to a remote corner of the Himalayas', is related in an article in the English Guardian. It was male economic migrants who went to India and "returned home with a very different legacy to the one [they] anticipated", infecting their partners, who then had children born with the virus. (But things are now improving because of the actions of the female victims.)

Here's a comment on an 'interview' with one of the males who went to India to work: "Like many other men interviewed in Achham, Sarpa has a well-rehearsed story that explains how he believes he contracted HIV, but it does not involve any sex workers, whom researchers believe are the primary source of migrants’ HIV infections."

Journalist Kate Hodal doesn't bother telling us how Sarpa says he was infected, preferring instead to believe the testimony of 'researchers'. How these researchers know that Sarpa is a liar, along with all the other people they have interviewed (and disbelieved), is anyone's guess. Perhaps they have some independent explanation or account of the HIV risks that people face in India?

While Sarpa speaks "coolly", his wife Sita "has had to accept the likelihood [Sarpa] visited Indian brothels", indicating all this with a shake of her head.

Hodal is clearly something of a psychic, who can know that while Sarpa lies, Sita tells the truth, but without uttering it. Hodal also knows that the opinion of researchers about HIV risks is of more value than the self-reported accounts of people who are infected, or who may become infected.

Meanwhile in Canada, journalist Ashifa Kassam writes about a pop-up restaurant run by HIV positive people. Far from pointing the finger at people with HIV, the article is about ‘challenging stigma’. The words of those interviewed are quoted, and their honesty is not in question.

Population figures, numbers of people living with HIV, prevalence, even the breakdown by gender of those infected, are not vastly different in Canada and Nepal. Although Nepal’s epidemic is usually described as ‘concentrated’, in contrast to Canada’s ‘low-level’ epidemic, the two are remarkably similar in some ways.

In contrast, in Canada, the vast majority of people are infected with HIV through unprotected, receptive anal sex and injecting drug use. But neither of those routes are thought to be so common in Nepal.

However, there is a huge difference in the way HIV in Nepal and Canada are viewed by the media. In Canada, those with HIV are wholeheartedly encouraged to continue their fight against stigma. But in Nepal, the journalist writes something she may have believed before she left her desk: HIV is ‘spread’ by promiscuous men, to unwitting women and children.

HIV positive Canadians can speak for themselves, and are not required to explain or justify their status. But Nepalese men need journalists and researchers to call them out on their lies about how they were infected; and Nepalese women need the same intermediaries to identify them as victims, unable to name the aggressors, or to speculate about how their partners became infected.

HIV and Sex: Fallacy of the Single Cause

2017-10-29T16:59:00.003+03:00

The four Kenyan counties of Kisumu, Homa Bay, Siaya and Migori that I mentioned in my last blog post have been in the news following the rerun of the presidential elections on Thursday 26 October. Voting in these four counties was suspended at an early stage and scheduled to resume on Saturday 28, but they did not go ahead.

The result of the presidential elections held in August was disputed in court, hence the rerun. But the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, later called for the elections to be boycotted, and turnout has been very low. The four counties in question are home to the majority of Odinga’s own Luo tribe, and a large proportion of people who might vote for him as president.

Astoundingly, one third of all of Kenya’s 1.6m HIV positive people live in these four counties, even though only about one tenth of Kenyans live there. These counties make up the bulk of the former Nyanza Province, in the southeast. In the blog post before that I wrote about a contrasting area, where 0.2% of HIV positive people live: Mandera, Garissa and Wajir, the former northwestern province, with a population of about 1.6m (3.5% of Kenya’s population).

In the earlier of these two posts I speculated that HIV prevalence in the northeastern counties may have remained low because of the geographical isolation of the area. Few roads go there, infrastructure is underdeveloped, health services are few and far between, and usage of health services tends to be low. Quality of health services is also likely to be low, but less harm can result if most people stay away from facilities.

In the southwest, where infrastructure is a bit better, usage of health services is higher. This means that a lot more people are being exposed to potentially unsafe healthcare. Over 4m people live in 10,200 km2, compared to the 1.6m people in the northeast, an area of 127,300 km2. Population density can be lower than 10/km2 in the northeast and as high as 460/km2 in the southwest.

Variations in sexual behavior don’t correlate very well with variations in HIV prevalence or distribution, so it can’t be the single or simple cause of HIV transmission. UNAIDS and other establishments involved in HIV programming claim that 80-90% of HIV transmission in high prevalence African countries is due to ‘unsafe’ sexual behavior, but they have never been able to demonstrate how such a claim could be true, or even plausible.

However, it could be argued that variation in exposure to potentially unsafe healthcare practices correlates much better with HIV transmission. Both areas are isolated politically, and have been for many decades. Low usage of health facilities and social services (and low availability) seems to be a consequence of the political isolation experienced by the northwest. It is home to many of Kenya’s ethnic Somalis, a piece of land that was formerly part of Somalia.

Down in the southwest, the politically isolated Luo population experienced a certain amount of growth and prosperity after independence, especially during the explosion in the population of Nile Perch in Lake Victoria. People with a bit more money are likely to spend some of that money on healthcare. But if that healthcare is not of high quality, is not safe, this might explain why wealthier people in high prevalence African countries tend to be more likely to be infected with HIV than poorer people.

These two geographical areas have certain things in common: they are overwhelmingly populated by one ethnic group, and have both sought to distance themselves from the rest of Kenya; there has even been talk of complete political separation. But there must also be something very different about the two areas that explains why the HIV burden is over 160 times higher in the southwest than it is in the northeast.

Search for ‘sexual reductionism’ on Google and you’ll come across a discussion about a Vermeer exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. This will give you some idea of how current HIV epidemiology seems to proceed. Apparently the texts accompanying the paintings treat every detail of the art works as being about sex.

For UNAIDS, variation in HIV prevalence is all about sex: poor people sell sex, rich people buy sex, as do employed people, women are more vulnerable to sexual exposure than men, men are more promiscuous, sexual mores are different in Muslim communities, etc. But an alternative explanation is that variation in access to potentially unsafe healthcare facilities can better account for variation in HIV prevalence within and between geographical areas.

The history of the isolation of the southwest and northeast counties of Kenya from much of the rest of the country, political, geographical, ethnic and other forms of separation, is a long and complex one. But so too is the history of the HIV epidemic, from its origins in equatorial Africa to its global spread, and the multiple causal factors that resulted in hyperendemic levels in some countries (and within some countries), but low levels in others.