Fight against Aids: How UNAids perpetuated the myth of condom effectiveness in Africa in the face of all the evidence

Unlike people in Western countries, who mainly practice a combination of casual sex and “serial monogamy”, people in sub-Saharan Africa are somewhat more likely to have a small number of long term relationships at the same time.

These so-called “concurrent partnerships” turn out to be much more dangerous than “serial monogamy” even if most people have relatively few sexual partners.

Many experts now maintain that this could help explain why HIV rates are so high in Africa, and why condoms—which are seldom used in long term relationships, even concurrent ones—have not been more successful in bringing the epidemic under control.

Maxine Ankrah ‘study was not only ignored, but her data was “re-analyzed” so that it would support the hypothesis that condoms had brought HIV under control in Uganda.

Three independent researchers have since shown that Ankrah's original analysis was correct. Various subsequent studies have also proven the Hearst/Chen report to have been accurate.

Why would UNAIDS, a renowned global organization dedicated to educating governments around the world about the greatest plague of our times, behave in such a manner unbecoming of a world institution?

Critics of the organization believe that the facts unearthed by Maxine Ankrah, Norman Hearst, Tom Barton and others were simply too hard for UNAIDS to swallow since they contradicted the organization’s belief system- that condoms and not behaviour change are the ultimate solution to preventing the spread of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. In short, it was a clear case of ideology taking precedence over epidemiological facts.

“Top brass at UNAIDS have admitted to me privately that they knew in the 1990s that in Africa, long term concurrent relationships were more dangerous than casual/commercial ones,” laments Helen Epstein, speaking from her home in Harlem, New York and author of the recent book THE INVISIBLE CURE: Africa, the West and the fight against AIDS .

“I asked them why nothing was done to raise awareness about it, and received no reply…. This [research on and educational programs geared towards long-term, multiple concurrency] all could have happened ten years ago, had Western AIDS experts shared the information, which some independent academics were urging them to do. Would it have made a difference for HIV prevention? We may never know, but according to the charter of the World Health Organization, access to accurate health information is a human right.”

UNAIDS has repeatedly emphasized to the world that declines of HIV-infection rates in Thailand, for example, was attributed to the use of condoms only.

However, it was condoms (for high risk groups) plus a reduction in multiple sexual partnerships according to two earlier reports published in 1996 and 1998 respectively: “Changes in sexual behaviour and a decline in HIV infection among young men in Thailand” by K.E. Nelson and colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine, 1996; and “AIDS and behavioural change to reduce risk: a review” by M.H. Becker and J.G. Joseph in the American Journal of Public Health.

Critics of UNAIDS have concluded that the main reason why it, and other international bodies ignore behaviour change is that primary prevention of any infectious diseases is perhaps the greatest health challenge of our time.

Getting human beings to change deeply ingrained behaviour (sexual or otherwise) is a monumental task if there ever was one.

Historically the prevention and control of diseases linked to human behaviours, such as sexually transmitted diseases (STD), has been largely unsuccessful.

For example, doctors dealing with the spread of STDs were aptly skilled in diagnosis and treatment but were inept at eliminating or reducing what is called sexual risk behaviour.