Former WHO HIV/AIDS Expert Doubts Widespread Risks

A former World Health Organisation expert has issued a stark warning that HIV/AIDS campaigners are circulating "misconceptions" about which groups are at risk from the virus.

Dr James Chin, who was head of a WHO Global Programme on Aids unit from 1987-1992, has released a new book in which he says people in the general population outside Africa are unlikely to contract HIV/AIDS because it is restricted to certain high-risk groups, the BBC has reported.

Campaigners against HIV/AIDS have been promoting a message of safer sex, which insists on the use of condoms. They say Dr Chin's views are not accurate and go against current thinking from major bodies.

Dr Chin has insisted that HIV has relatively low prevalence in most nations across the world and can be expected to remain low. This is not because of effective HIV prevention work, he says, but because infection rates are limited by the numbers in groups whose behaviour puts them at high risk.

In particular that former WHO AIDS head says it is only in sub-Saharan Africa, where unprotected sex outside marriage is common, that the risk of heterosexual HIV transmission is high. In other parts of the world, he claims that HIV is seen only in men who have sex with other men, intravenous drug users and female sex workers.

Effectively he has said that, unless the clients or partners of people in these groups also indulge in high-risk behaviour, the virus will not spread.

Dr Chin says these points have been ignored by UNAIDS and AIDS activists because it is "politically and socially more acceptable" to say HIV risk behaviours are present in all populations, the BBC has reported.

Writing in "The Aids Pandemic", Dr Chin says: "These activists do not want to further stigmatise persons or population groups who have such high risk levels of HIV risk behaviours and who are already marginalised.

"By refusing to accept the fact that HIV is very difficult to transmit sexually without the highest levels of sexual risk behaviours, Aids programmes have avoided labelling some populations as being more promiscuous than others.

"It is a much more socially and politically correct public health message to say that sexual promiscuity exists in all populations and thus the risk of epidemic heterosexual HIV transmission to the general public, or to ordinary people can be prevented only by aggressive programmes directed at the general population, and especially to youth."

Dr Purnima Mane, director of policy evidence and partnerships at UNAIDS said: "Without having access to the full text of the book, it is very difficult for UNAIDS to comment on it," according to the BBC.

She added: "The AIDS response has always invited a high-level of debate and discussion. UNAIDS welcomes this debate and stands by its scientific approach.

"Twenty-five years into the AIDS epidemic has shown the world how the epidemic has continued to evolve and how the response must also evolve.

"UNAIDS data is not influenced by political or fundraising agendas."

Lisa Power, head of policy at the UK's Terrence Higgins Trust, insisted that Dr Chin's views may have been accurate 10 to 15 years ago, but were not true now.