The experience at Nyumbani flies in the face of the coventional theories about the history of AIDS in Africa. Dr Robert Gallo announced in 1984 that HIV, a newly discovered virus, had been identified as the cause of the immune system breakdown devastating homosexual communities in the United States and Europe. Western doctors invaded Africa with HIV testing kits and computers to map the extent to which people were infected there. The tests that led to those estimates are now admitted to have been unreliable, producing a high proportion of false positive results. But researchers have not established the extent to which these are genuinely the result of a new virus, as opposed to a consequence of an intensification in long-established threats to health.
Observers say poverty has driven millions of women into prostitution.
Young African males have also been drawn into the trade. Those whose immune systems collapse, as well as those who harbour a cocktail of infections, can become lethally infective. However, a huge gap remains between this widely acknowledged increase in threats to health associated with prostitutes and their contacts, and the apocalyptic vision of Africa's future espoused by WHO on the basis of its HIV statistics. As well as using a test that may be useless, these statistics are based on small and often inadequate population samples. No doubt about it.