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

This maybe a problem of development since many large AIDS organizations as well as prominent donor organizations are indeed ideology-driven says Edward C. Green of the Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health whose next book will focus on AIDS and ideology.

In her recent paper, AIDS and the Irrational, published in the November 2008 issue of the British Medical Journal, Helen Epstein says that the problem with UNAIDS is its duel and duelling mandate, which on the one hand is to dispense accurate scientific information about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and on t/he other hand to advise governments around the world on how to deal with the deadly disease.

“The intrinsic tension between politics and science has been especially acute when it comes to answering two of the most vital questions in AIDS prevention: why is the epidemic in Africa so severe? And what are the best ways of dealing with it?” says Epstein.

She recommends that scientific issues should be addressed through a more open process of research and peer review, rather than by the fiat of a single, largely unregulated UN agency.

Surprisingly, there is a considerable lack of formal education about LMCP in school-based AIDS education programs in SSA given that fact that knowledge of LMCP as a driving factor of the epidemic in Africa has been available since Maxine Ankrah’s report in 1993.

Instead such programs advocate abstinence, condoms, etc.

Experts such as Helen Epstein says that education about concurrency should be integrated into all AIDS programs in Africa including those aimed at school children and young people.

Epstein also stresses that education should stress that although delay of sexual debut is a sensible goal, personal fidelity is no guarantee of protection against HIV if the partner one eventually ends up with has even one other concurrent partners.