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Category Archives: unsafe healthcare

Guardian Angles: Forced Sex to Pay Hospital Bills?

1 Comment Posted by on December 11, 2017

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.

behavioral paradigm, HIV, institutional racism, media racism, unsafe healthcare ,

‘African’ Sexuality: Colonial Trope or New Racism?

1 Comment Posted by on November 26, 2017

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.

AIDS, behavioral paradigm, HIV, institutional racism, unsafe healthcare ,

Via Negativa and ‘First do no Harm’

2 Comments Posted by on October 21, 2017

I am in favor of routine vaccination, for my children and for children in my care. I always take children to a doctor when there is something that won’t go away on its own, or that I don’t recognize, and I would do the same for myself. So I am certainly not advocating ‘doing nothing’ as a response to medical problems. I write as a layperson, with an interest in healthcare and development.

But all healthcare must also be safe healthcare; people should be granted their right to know everything they need to know in order to make the best choices for themselves and their dependents, in accordance with the Lisbon Declaration on the Rights of the Patient, along with other instruments relating to patient safety. I feel that people, especially in developing countries, are frequently denied these rights, and that the results of this can be fatal.

In his guest post for this blog, Helmut Jager discusses the example of the infection of millions of Egyptians with hepatitis C (HCV) through unsafe healthcare, resulting in the highest prevalence of the virus in the world. Jager states that the “causes of the infections [globally] mostly are: bad medicine or intravenous drug addiction”.

The ‘bad’ medicine Jager refers to is a program intended to reduce infection with schistosomiasis (bilharzia), caused by a waterborne parasite. This program involved the use of syringes, needles and perhaps other equipment that were not always sterile. Under such conditions bloodborne pathogens, in this case, HCV, can be transmitted from patient to patient.

The medicine Jager describes is ‘bad’ because conditions in healthcare facilities are unsafe, instruments are being reused without adequate sterilization, etc. Rising numbers of people with HCV in the population eventually visiting health facilities meant increasing numbers of healthcare associated transmissions, also called ‘iatrogenic’; a vicious cycle.

Jager is not suggesting that healthcare facilities should do nothing about schistosomiasis (or any other condition) in order to avoid the risk of iatrogenic transmission of HCV or other bloodborne pathogens. He is recommending that unsafe practices be eradicated, practices such as the reuse of injecting and other equipment and processes that involve piercing the skin, or even come in contact with bodily fluids, such as speculums, gloves, etc.

Reducing unnecessary medicine is another of Jager’s recommendations. The WHO estimates that 16 billion injections are administered globally every year. In some countries up to 70% are probably unnecessary. About 37% were said to involve reused injecting equipment. Therefore, reuse of other skin-piercing equipment may also add substantially to the problem.

Jager’s blog is about the high cost of Gilead’s ‘sofosbuvir’ and the damage this does to programs aimed at eradicating the virus. Sofosbuvir has been recommended by the WHO for the treatment of HCV: it is unaffordable for people in poor countries, who make up the bulk of those living with the virus, at risk of suffering serious illness from it, and of dying from it. Jager cites a source reporting that “treatment costs in the US are US$84,000 and in the Netherlands €46,000. The production cost of the drug is estimated not to exceed US$140.”

There are two man-made disasters here: first, there’s the raising of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s. The dam was intended to control the flow of the Nile in order to improve irrigation provision and generate hydroelectricity; this damaged ecosystems and led to an increase in schistosoma infestations. The second was the massive outbreak of HCV caused by unsafe healthcare procedures, employed to address the schistosomiasis endemicity, that affected millions of people.

Apparently environmental impact assessments evolved in the 1960s, but it is likely there was something similar before the specific phrase was adopted. After all, it was known that introducing invasive species of fish to Lake Victoria would cause huge and irreversible problems early in the last century; the invasive species were introduced anyway, because certain parties wanted them to be (the colonials wanted to introduce sport fishing to the lake for their enjoyment). The fragility of ecologies has been recognized for a long time.

Whether either or both these disasters could have been avoided 50 or more years ago, strategies to eradicate schistosomiasis sometimes seem to concentrate on a quick technical fix (there’s even a vaccine in development now), such as mass administration of Praziquantel. Praziquantel works, up to a point. It cures patients, and reduces the infected population, which promotes herd immunity and helps interrupt the life cycle of the parasite. But it is less effective in eradicating the parasite when used on its own.

Research in Lake Victoria finds that the population affected by schistosomiasis also needs access to safe drinking and domestic water supplies, reduced contact with contaminated water, adequate waste disposal (which can interrupt the life cycle of the parasite), etc. In other words, the first disaster Jager alludes to, schistosoma infestation in the waterways, affects a much larger population than those who live close to and depend on the waters of the Nile.

This is a larger and more general problem, because all massive infrastructure projects risk destroying ecosystems and environments. And the medical treatment people need once their water supply is infested can be too little; but possibly not too late. It’s too little because those affected will still need access to safe water and sanitation, but some of these issues can be addressed, bearing in mind the counsel of ‘first, do no harm’.

Water and sanitation provision is vital, as is promotion of good health related information. Gilead are unlikely to scale back their profits much unless they are compelled to do so; yet, intervention would not be unprecedented. Unsafe healthcare can be eradicated, much more cheaply and efficiently than mopping up the victims of unsafe healthcare. And unnecessary healthcare can also be reduced, substantially, which will further reduce unsafe healthcare.

In my previous post I speculated that counties in Kenya with very low HIV prevalence, such as Wajir, Garissa and Mandera, may have escaped high levels of transmission through unsafe healthcare by having very low levels of healthcare provision of any kind. I also speculated that high HIV prevalence in counties such as Homa Bay, Kisumu, Siaya and Migori may be a result of greater access to healthcare facilities and health programs whose practices are not particularly safe.

So those four counties on the shores of Lake Victoria, with fishing as one of the most important activities, must have very high rates of intestinal parasites (and other conditions; Eileen Stillwaggon sets out this argument in Aids and the Ecology of Poverty). If use of health facilities is high, the chances of a pathogen such as HIV contaminating medical equipment, which is then reused without adequate sterilization, must also be high.

Where healthcare is unsafe, carrying the risk of exposure to bloodborne pathogens, such as HCV, HIV and others through reuse of skin-piercing instruments, it’s best avoided; via negativa is the best counsel, even if most avoidance is a result of poverty at the moment. There is still the option of ‘doing no harm’, but only if the contribution of unsafe healthcare to HIV epidemics so far is thoroughly investigated. If that’s not done, people would be better off to stay away from healthcare facilities.

AIDS, HIV, iatrogenic, nosocomial, unsafe healthcare , ,

Hepatitis C eradication and profit

2 Comments Posted by on September 20, 2017

Note: This is a guest blog by Helmut Jäger. Dr Jäger’s website and blog provides more information and thoughtful comments on healthcare issues at: http://www.medizinisches-coaching.net/

Good news: hepatitis C can be cured

Since 2016, the World Health Organization recommends treating hepatitis C infection with sofosbuvir (NS5B-Polymerase-inhibitor). The manufacturer (Gilead) demands an extremely high price, and

“.. the public paid twice: for the pharmaceutical research and for the purchase of the product. The enormous profits flow to the Gilead shareholders.”(Roy BMJ 2016, 354: i3718)

The evidence for the effectiveness of direct-acting antivirals (DAA) for chronic hepatitis C comes from short-term trials. Cochrane is unable to determine the effect of long-term treatment with these drugs:

DAAs may reduce the number of people with detectable virus in their blood, but we do not have sufficient evidence from randomised trials that enables us to understand how SVR (sustained virological response: eradication of hepatitis C virus from the blood) affects long-term clinical outcomes. SVR is still an outcome that needs proper validation in randomised clinical trials. (Cochrane 18.09.2017: http://www.cochrane.org/CD012143/LIVER_direct-acting-antivirals-chronic-hepatitis-c.)

Egypt is particularly affected by hepatitis C. Here the government negotiated special discounts with Gilead, so that relatively cheap treatment will be available. It’s the foundation of just another lucrative business based on a man-made disaster.

tourcure

Tour’n Cure: The profitable medical eradication of a problem that would not exist without medicine.

Bad news: Hepatitis C will still be transmitted by skin piercing procedures

About 2-3% of the world’s population is infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV); 350,000 of these 130-170 million people die per year. HCV causes liver infections, which are chronic in more than 70% of infected persons. That is, they do not completely cure after an infection. After one or maybe two decades, the damaged liver can fail, or develop cancer. The survival rates are low in the late stages of the disease, even under optimal treatment conditions.

Hepatitis C viruses are very sensitive to environmental influences so they are transmitted almost exclusively through blood or blood products or unclean syringes. Unlike hepatitis B or HIV/AIDS, HCV infections through sexual contacts are rare. Hence, the incidence of HCV is an indicator of a dangerous handling of needles, syringes, other medical instruments or products that lead to a direct blood contact. And new cases of HCV are acquired most likely in health care facilities or by intravenous drug use.

Treatment of disease and prevention of new infections 

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced in 2016 that it wants to “combat” hepatitis C and “exterminate” it by 2030. (WHO 2017: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs164/en/)

unsafe-needles

Hazardous needles somewhere in Africa (image: Jäger, Kinsahsa 1988)

WHO’s optimism is caused by the availability of sofosbuvir. The drug is said to have cured up to 90% of affected patients in clinical trials, and consequently was added to the WHO list of essential medicines. The pharmaceutical company Gilead faces a huge global market with high profit margins (WIPO 2015): The treatment costs in the US are US$84,000 and in the Netherlands €46,000. The production cost of the drug is estimated not to exceed US$140.(‘T Hoen 2016)

Most people affected by hepatitis C are poor. They now learn through the media that their suffering could be cured, and at the same time that this solution seems to be unavailable to them. Consequently, they will demand the necessary funds for humanitarian reasons from their governments. Gilead expects sofosbuvir will not be manufactured and sold without a license (about 100 times cheaper). The Indian authorities already concluded in 2016 a license agreement with Gilead, which will guarantee high profit rates on the subcontinent.(‘T Hoen 2016)

Attractive medical products and markets increase the risk of the production of counterfeit medicines

In India, the requirement to allow the production of the hepatitis C drug in the “national interest” license-free is not only risky for legal reasons. India already is the world’s leading producer of fake medicines. Counterfeit drugs look exactly like real ones, but contain nothing (in the best case) or poison. About 35% of the malaria drugs in the African market are fake or useless, and they are mostly from India or China (see below: fake drugs). In the case of Egypt, medical institutions tried to open up a lucrative international market (“Tour’n cure”). Therefore, it will not be long until the first fake “sofosbuvir preparations” are offered.

The history of the hepatitis C epidemic in Egypt

The disaster of hepatitis C contamination started in Egypt more than sixty years ago. Efforts to regulate the Nile increased the risk of schistosomiasis infections. These parasites cause numerous health problems, mostly in the pelvic organs, and in rare cases, cancer. The worm larvae swim in stagnant water that has been contaminated by human urine or feces, and they enter the blood system of healthy people by piercing the skin.

The frequency of these worm infections increased rapidly after 1964, when the fast-flowing Nile was tamed by the Aswan Dam. In a relatively short time 10% of the Egyptian population was colonized by the parasite. The Ministry of Health then treated large parts of the population with injections containing antimony potassium tartrate. Until 1980 this toxic compound was considered the only effective remedy for this worm-infection. Today it is no longer used, not even in veterinary medicine.

Many years after the start of the campaign an initially unexplained epidemic of hepatitis C  was noticed in Egypt. It turned out that most of the patients with hepatitis C virus received anti-schistosomiasis injections.

Those initially infected with hepatitis C virus had higher risks to be treated in health care facilities, where the virus was then transmitted to other patients. Today (according to different estimates) 3-10% of the Egyptian population is infected with hepatitis C, and 40,000 patients die per year with the disease. Because many patients are infected, today the risk to acquire hepatitis C infection in Egyptian health facilities, even in optimal hygenic conditions, is significantly higher than in countries where hepatitis C is relatively rare.(Strickland 2006, WHO 2014)

Hepatitis C epidemic in industrialized countries

But Egypt is not an isolated case. Hepatitis C affects mostly the residents of developing and emerging countries. But even in Germany more than half a million HCV infections are recorded.

In England, in 2015 the government had to apologize for the infection of nearly 3,000 people who received infected blood products between 1970 and 1990.(Wise 2015)

In the US hepatitis C is called a “hidden epidemic” because 300,000 people were infected each year a few decades ago.(Ward 2013, Warner 2015, CDC 2015, RKI 2015, Pozzetto 2014)

Syringes and blood products are dangerous if handled improperly or if they are used although they are not necessary

blood

Blood Bank in Kinshasa (Congo, 1990, image: Jäger)

Needles (in particular the worldwide introduction of disposable syringes and their inflationary use) contributed to the spread of viruses like HCV, HIV and others.(Jäger 1990-92) The problem of the HCV epidemic is caused by the health care system and its waste products that fall into the wrong hands. The causes of the infections mostly are: bad medicine or intravenous drug addiction. What happened in Egypt is just another example that sometimes (medical) solutions of seemingly controllable health problems can lead to much larger problems: because sometimes “the things bite back.”(Tenner 1997, Dörner 2003)

Therefore WHO’s strategy to eradicate hepatitis C, based only on treatments, cannot succeed as long as the much of the medical sectors in many poor countries remain dangerous-purely-commercial and in large parts uncontrolled. The WHO campaign certainly will enrich Gilead and some health institutions, but a reduction of the hepatitis C incidence will not take place if “bad medicine” and “drug addiction” are not targeted, preferably eradicated, or at least reduced.

Unnecessary medicine is risky and should be avoided

WHO and other international health organizations should strive to avoid unnecessary therapeutic skin piercing procedures, injections, surgery and transfusions, and (if these sometimes life saving procedures are necessary) establish strict quality control. The commerce of medical tourism and beauty-interventions (botox, piercing, tattoo) should be strictly controlled.

unsafe-injection

Hazardous needles anywhere else in Africa (image: Jäger)

And we should invest in training patients: They should be supported to reduce their demand for health-care-products and to increase their knowledge in order to distinguish “good” and “bad” medicine.

 More

Literature

Bad Medicine in economically weak countries (such as “fake drugs”):

Why things bite back

blood, HCV, Hepatitis C, iatrogenic, nosocomial, unsafe healthcare , ,

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis: Risks in the Pipeline?

1 Comment Posted by on September 15, 2017

An estimated 1 million Kenyans are receiving antiretroviral drugs, about 64% of all HIV positive people. Partly as a result of this, death rates, along with the rate of new infections, have continued a decline that started in the early 2000s, and the early to mid 90s, respectively. Now pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is being added to the country’s HIV strategy, a course of antiretroviral drugs taken by HIV negative people, which should significantly reduce the risk of their being infected.

So this should be a good time to look at how HIV treatment in its various forms should be targeted. ARVs are relatively straightforward, people testing positive can be put on treatment. But PrEP, if it is expected to reduce infections, needs to be prescribed for those most at risk. This is not as simple as it sounds, because HIV resources have so far been flung far and wide in Kenya, as if those who most need them will magically benefit.

The ruling assumption for high prevalence countries has been that 80-90% of all HIV transmission is a result of ‘unsafe’ sexual behavior. HIV prevalence is seen as a reliable indicator of ‘unsafe’ sexual behavior, and ‘unsafe’ sexual behavior, or perceived behavior, is seen as a reliable indicator of prevalence.

This is completely circular, of course. But if these prejudices are carried over from addressing the HIV positive population, and applied equally to the HIV negative population, the bulk of the drugs may as effectively be flushed down the toilet. The majority of Kenyans are, were, or will be sexually active. But the majority are not at risk of being infected with HIV.

Kenya’s HIV epidemic, in common with the epidemics in several other East African countries, is quite old. The virus has been circulating since the 50s and 60s, so the epidemic is about half a century old, give or take a few years. In other countries, such as the DRC, the virus has probably been around for about 100 years, although it must have affected only small numbers of people for many decades.

Don’t be fooled by figures suggesting that HIV has only been around since it was first recognized by doctors in the early 1980s (or just a little bit earlier), and later described by scientists. UNAIDS estimate that prevalence was already about 3% in Kenya by 1990, rising to over 10% later in the decade, to peak at almost 11%. From 2000, prevalence declined for a few years, rose again from 2005, then dropped to 6%.

This suggests that the rate of new infections (incidence) peaked and started to decline in the early to mid 90s, prevalence peaked and started to decline by the late 90s, and death rates would have peaked in the early 2000s. By 2007 prevalence was 8% and it is now 6%, so it has hovered between 6 and 8% for more than 10 years. Declines are slow, irrespective of major interventions.

Although the widespread use of ARVs, which began in the late 2000s, has contributed to a decline in new infections, prevalence and death rates, it is not possible to attribute these improvements to drugs alone. Making PrEP available to all those assumed to be ‘at risk’ of being infected, purely on the basis of the circular argument mentioned above means that this is going to be an expensive, but very ineffective intervention.

This sounds like bad news, but it doesn’t have to be seen that way. If the HIV risks people face could be identified, whether they are sexual or non-sexual, this will reduce the number of people who need PrEP. Most non-sexual risks, for example, exposure to blood and other bodily fluids through unsafe healthcare, cosmetic and traditional practices, are easily and cheaply avoided. No need to give PrEP to all the patients at a clinic when you could just clean up the clinic, right?

But also, things have changed, PrEP allows us to target those most at risk much more accurately than before. If people know they can protect themselves, they will. Clinics can now safely return to the practice of ‘contact tracing’, identifying how each person testing positive may have been infected, and then addressing that source of infection, whether it was a sexual partner, a clinic, a tattoo artist, or whatever.

The decision to discontinue tracing contacts, which was made in a very different context (a rich country, where the bulk of HIV transmissions were occurring among a relatively small population, and resulting from an easily identified set of behaviors) is inappropriate for a country with a massive HIV epidemic, where the risks have not been clearly demonstrated, and averted. In Kenya, for example, the majority of people who become infected with HIV do not face the high risks identified in rich countries, receptive anal sex and injecting drug use.

If identifying how people become infected can allow HIV negative people to avoid being infected, and allow HIV positive people to avoid infecting others, then contact tracing is vital in high prevalence countries. It is also vital if interventions such as PrEP are to be effective, or even affordable. Already, researchers have found that not being able to identify where the risks are coming from will significantly increase the quantity of drugs each person needs, in addition to vastly increasing the number of people deemed to be in need of PrEP.

Despite ample evidence that non-sexual risks are as important as sexual risks, evidence that has been available since the virus was first identified as causing Aids, most research concentrates on reporting sexual risk only, collecting data about sexual risks, recommending strategies to reduce sexual risks only, while ignoring, denying or failing to collect data on non sexual risks.

Mass ARV rollout complements pre-existing trends in HIV epidemics, though not as much as it could have, had the contribution of non-sexual transmission been acknowledged. However, PrEP will be a slow and inefficient solution unless targeted at those truly at risk, as opposed to the tens or hundreds of millions who are sexually active. People can only protect themselves if they know what the risks are, whether they do it by avoiding exposure, or by taking prophylactic drugs.

behavioral paradigm, HIV, pre-exposure prophylaxis, PrEP, unsafe healthcare

Choke on it: Peak Free Lunch at HIV Inc?

1 Comment Posted by on September 7, 2017

There have been several mentions recently of significant cuts in HIV funding, including PEPFAR and the Global Fund for Aids, TB and Malaria. It is said that funding could be cut by several billion dollars per annum, even as much as one third of all funding. Should we be worried?

According to UNAIDS, funding available for low and middle income countries has grown from $4.8 billion in 2000 to $19.5 billion in 2016. During that time, deaths from Aids have dropped from a peak of 1.9 million people in 2005 to 1 million in 2016.

The number of new infections has gone from about 4.7 million in 1995 to 1.8 million in 2016 and the number accessing treatment has gone from 685,000 people in 2000 to 19.5m people in 2016. The fear is that the number of deaths will cease to drop, or even increase, as the number of people on treatment flattens out or drops.

The gains over the last 15 years are certainly impressive, especially the increases in funding. But the correlation between increases in funding and improvements in HIV indicators is not so clear. Drops in rates of new infections had started many years before, and even death rates had peaked and started to decline before funds such as PEPFAR and GPATM would have had much impact.

In fact, figures for new transmissions in some high prevalence countries started to drop in the 80s (Uganda) and 90s (Kenya and Tanzania), long before big funding and large treatment programs were available. By the 2000s, several countries with serious epidemics were already seeing a substantial downward trend (Zimbabwe), with only an occasional upward blip, such as that experienced in Uganda.

Here are some ways that a lot more could be achieved with a lot less money:

  • Trace the possible source of every new infection; every new infection is potentially the source of more than one further infection, so failure to trace sources represents one of the biggest missed opportunities of the last 30 years of providing HIV services
  • Offer non-HIV healthcare services to those who test negative (as an incentive to testing), eg, free treatment for conditions other than HIV, including STIs
  • Re-examine the relative contributions of non-sexual and sexual infection routes for HIV, which must vary considerably from country to country, even within countries
  • Re-integrate HIV clinics and services into other health facilities, getting rid of expensive parallel HIV-specific structures
  • Distribute funding at a level closer to people on the ground, such as HIV positive people and those providing services
  • Re-direct some of the remaining funding to improving safety in certain service areas, eg, maternal health
  • ‘No blame’ investigations into serious outbreaks, especially among those whose risk should be low, eg, maternal health beneficiaries, virgins, infants, etc
  • Drop failing programs, such as abstinence-only and other behavioral programs that are aimed solely at sexual behavior
  • Listen to leaders who are calling for positive change, for things to be done differently, for a re-think of some of the strategies that have been failing for a long time

Big reductions in HIV funding could be used as an opportunity to make positive changes in the way the remaining funding is spent, and allow each dollar to go much further. Country leaders need to think differently, rather than chaining themselves to strategies that have been failing for years. Massive HIV NGOs and other institutions are too far removed from individual epidemics to be able to see differences between countries and within countries.

What we should worry about is stasis: static thinking in HIV institutions, static research focus in universities, static behavior in health facilities, static attitudes that have not moved on from the sensationalist finger-pointing of the 1980s. Static or falling funding is irrelevant so long as HIV spending remains independent of what’s happening on the ground. A radical drop in funding may bring about the very changes that have been wanting for decades.

AIDS, HIV, institutional racism, unsafe healthcare , , , , ,

America’s Other Epidemic: HIV in Confederate States

1 Comment Posted by on September 1, 2017

Almost 70% of new HIV infections each year in the US are a result of male to male sex. The other 30% results from injecting drug use and non-male to male sex. But prevalence varies considerably from state to state. An estimated 45% of all HIV positive people live in the southern region of the US. Prevalence is also high in some northeastern states, especially in some cities.

The southern region consists of Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Dist. Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Prevalence is highest in the District of Columbia; at 3.61% that’s higher than in 138 countries. Florida has the highest HIV positive African American population, 48,500 people, higher than in 109 countries.

In the southern states, an estimated 55% of the people living with HIV are African Americans. The figure for the Midwest is 47%, 42% for the Northeast and 18% for the West. Although African Americans only make up just over 13% of the population, almost half live in southern states, about 22 million people. And HIV prevalence among African Americans in southern states is 7 times higher than it is among white Americans.

Prevalence in every southern state is several times higher among African Americans than it is among white Americans; it’s 3 times higher in the District of Columbia and 9 times higher in Maryland. In 2014, almost half of all new HIV infections in the US were among African Americans and two thirds of people living with HIV in southern states are African Americans.

The contrast is also stark for heterosexual HIV: there were more than 4,600 female African Americans infected, compared to just over 1,100 female white Americans infected. Infections classified as ‘white heterosexual male’ are low in number, whereas an estimated 2,000 were classified as ‘black heterosexual male’.

Why would sexual behavior among African Americans, homosexual and heterosexual, be more risky than sexual behavior among white Americans? And why would sexual behavior be exceptionally risky in southern states? Or is there more to high HIV prevalence than levels of sexual behavior and types of sexual practice?

To put it another way, do African Americans tend to conform to the many stereotypes about them, such as levels of sexual behavior, types of sexual behavior, attitudes towards sex, etc? Or are there things about the environment, such as living conditions, economic and social conditions and conditions in healthcare facilities, for example, that increase the risk of infection that African Americans face?

It’s hard to know what conditions, exactly, could increase risk to such a degree, or even how. But there certainly are factors that are particularly acute in southern states. The bottom 11 states for life expectancy are in the southern region, as are most of the states with the highest incarceration rates. Almost all the poorest states are in the south. States with the lowest rankings for educational attainment, at all levels, are in the south. Rates of unemployment and homicide rates are high.

Of course, some of the southern states are among the richest by GDP, with the highest household income. But they also have the some of the highest levels of inequality, with several states ranking lowest for economic indicators and several ranking poorest in the US. As a result, most of the states with the lowest Human Development Index are in the southern region. Rates of religiosity are high; this is the bible-belt.

Some sexual practices are low risk for HIV, some are high risk. But why do African Americans, gay and straight, face far higher risk of infection than white people? Prevalence in Somalia, Senegal, Niger, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt is lower than in the US (.6%). Prevalence in Burundi, DRC, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Mauritania is lower than in the US south (1.12%). HIV prevalence does not correlate well with sexual behavior data. So what other factors could be involved?

behavioral paradigm, HIV, MSM, unsafe healthcare

The Deep Racism of Pathologizing Sex

2 Comments Posted by on August 27, 2017

What are the assumptions behind an article entitled “’Why are you having sex?’: women bear brunt of Uganda’s high HIV rate”? Firstly, the bulk of HIV transmission is assumed to be a result of ‘unsafe’ heterosexual behavior. Secondly, the number of infected females outnumbers males by almost 2:1, but this is blamed on ‘male sexual behavior’ (white people protecting black women from black men, etc?). Thirdly, all ‘Africans’ engage in massive amounts of sex. Fourthly, ‘unsafe’ sex is the rule. Fifthly, they start young…the list goes on.

This claptrap is mixed in with pseudo-science: there is no evidence that a majority of HIV transmissions in African countries are a result of ‘unsafe’ heterosexual sex, only a lot of ‘expert’ opinion; indeed, the evidence shows that the majority of transmissions are very unlikely to be a result of ‘unsafe’ sex.

Figures cited for percentages infected, males and females infected, etc, are not incorrect, that’s not why I call them pseudo-science. The sleight of hand lies in the fact that they purport to bear some relation to the levels of sexual activity that would be required for Uganda’s epidemic to be overwhelmingly a result of heterosexual activity.

More than 80,000 Ugandans were said to have been newly infected in 2015. Given estimates that suggest the risk of transmission from a male to a female for penile-vaginal sex is 1/1,250 and the risk for a female to a male is 1/2,500, those 80,000 newly infected people could represent well over 100,000,000 sex acts.

The Guardian further claims that girls between 15 and 24 years old are infected at a rate of 570 per week, reflecting a further assumption, that sexual debut tends to be at an exceptionally young age in Uganda (not true, according to most research). Most young girls have not had hundreds of sexual experiences, even girls in their 20s. Some may have, but most have not.

Most people do not have hundreds of sexual experiences every year. That’s true in every country in the world, even in countries where The Guardian would have us believe they do, countries where HIV prevalence is high. A minority of people may have a lot of sexual experiences, a small minority, according to the copious quantities of data collected by some of the best funded HIV NGOs (hundreds of surveys here).

There are two blatant non sequiturs behind articles like this: one, sexual activity is an indication of HIV prevalence, and two, HIV prevalence is an indication of levels (and perhaps types) of sexual activity. Neither of these are supported by the evidence, only by the assumptions, the prejudices, the deeply held racism of the media and the international HIV industry.

One of the most egregious consequences of these racist views is that a lot of money and effort have been expended on useless ‘abstinence only until marriage’ programs (which could be better referred to as ‘abstinence only until death’). An update to an earlier meta-analysis of such programs concluded that:

“U.S. abstinence-only-until-marriage policies and programs are not effective, violate adolescent rights, stigmatize or exclude many youth, and reinforce harmful gender stereotypes. Adolescent sexual and reproductive health promotion should be based on scientific evidence and understanding, public health principles, and human rights.”

The Guardian article is pure speculation, with a handful of figures thrown in. There is the ever-present ‘expert’ opinion about why more women than men are infected, etc, but the only constant throughout the article is racism, about ‘Africans’, their implied sexual behavior, their attitudes towards women, especially young women…the rightness of the HIV industry and the wrongness of all ‘African’ people.

If this sort of article is to be believed, all sex is wrong in Africa, it’s all ‘unsafe’, it should all stop. The men are cruel, the women are powerless victims and only non-Africans can diagnose what is going on there, phrenologize the population, profile the groups, strategize their rehabilitation and save them all from damnation (‘Shut up and get back in your pigeon-hole, we were right all along!’).

The assumption behind this Guardian article is that HIV is almost always heterosexually transmitted in African countries, and the only way this could be true is if ‘Africans’ really are as promiscuous, impervious to reason, cruel and thoughtless to those around them and, frankly, primitive and uncivilized, as the age-old prejudice says they are. As long as it’s about ‘Africans’, you can insinuate these things as often as you want in the mainstream media.

This kind of article can give the impression that apartheid never ended in South Africa. Instead, it spread all over the world, affecting people from African countries and people of African origin. Africans are still apart when it comes to HIV, infected in numbers that are orders of magnitude higher than among non-African people. ‘Explanations’ of high HIV prevalence tell us that ‘Africans’ really are different, that non-Africans don’t behave the same way when it comes to sex, that there really is something ‘other’ about heterosexual sex among black people. Pure racism.

behavioral paradigm, HIV, institutional racism, media racism, unsafe healthcare ,

Lisbon Declaration: Scare Stories about Sex Cost Lives

1 Comment Posted by on June 15, 2017

Why would women in an African country fear being diagnosed HIV positive, refuse to take part in a treatment program that would keep them alive, and probably prevent them from infecting others? After all, the virus has been around for over 30 years and treatment has been available, free of charge, for more than a decade. We know how it can be spread, we just haven’t agreed on which are the most dangerous modes of transmission. But a study has found that women believe their husbands and families will reject them, perhaps divorce, disinherit, physically attack or even kill them because of their status.

Well, it’s not quite clear why Measure Evaluation felt the need to ask women why they were afraid, given the role of the HIV industry in stirring up that fear. Do the researchers think anyone would like to be diagnosed HIV positive and have to go home to their partner and explain how they were infected with a virus? The HIV industry insists HIV is almost always transmitted through sexual intercourse in African countries. It’s different in European countries, where people are not assumed to be ‘promiscuous’ just because they test positive.

HIV has long been presented as being primarily sexually transmitted among heterosexuals, in African countries. People who are infected tend to be told that they were almost certainly infected by having sexual intercourse with a HIV positive person. However, many people who have tested positive have objected that they have not had sexual intercourse at all; or they know that the person (or people) they have had sex with are negative; or they took adequate precautions, etc.

In non-African countries, such as the US, the largest group of people infected with HIV are men who have sex with men. The next largest group is injecting drug users. Therefore, many would ask why heterosexual sex appears to be so much more risky in some African countries than it does in non-African countries. Prevalence among certain groups, such as young women in parts of South Africa, has approached 50%, even higher sometimes. Prevalence is over 20% in some southern African countries (although not in any non-African country).

UNAIDS, WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other parties have tied themselves in knots trying to explain away the glaring racism implied in the claim that up to 85% of infections in African countries are a result of unsafe sex. When non-African people say that they could not have been infected through sexual intercourse, the matter can be investigated. Otherwise, their own statement of their risks is accepted, and they are not branded as some kind of sexual deviant.

I’ll quote Catherine Hankins, formerly a senior officer at UNAIDS, expressing her views on ‘African men’: “Take a middle-class African businessman. He has had five women – nothing excessive. But the pattern we find is that he has a wife. He also has an on-off affair with an office colleague. He also has what the French call a ‘deuxième bureau’ – a mistress who might have a child. And once a year he goes back to his home village and has sex with his original village sweetheart. Then he gets HIV from a bar girl on a business trip.”

Hankins and her fellow scientists may see this as a reasonable explanation for extraordinarily high rates of transmission, usually in relatively clearly delineated pockets, in high prevalence African countries. But if that’s what ‘African’ men tend to be like, you might expect HIV prevalence to be relatively high in almost every ‘African’ country, in all cities, and in all densely populated areas. You could also be forgiven for wondering whether Hankins believes that all women are similarly ‘promiscuous’, or if they are mostly victims.

The reality is quite different: HIV prevalence is highest in a handful of southern African countries; next highest are parts of East African countries, such as the area around Lake Victoria and one of the southern districts in Tanzania; Nairobi, Kampala and a few others places were also hard hit by the pandemic (with low prevalence elsewhere); but in central African countries, even West Africa, prevalence is much lower, and in North Africa rates are lower than in many western countries.

In fact, prevalence is often high among wealthier people, employed people, people with access to better road infrastructure and better access to healthcare. ‘Promiscuity’ (perhaps not as rich as Hankins’ scenario) occurs everywhere, not just in a handful of southern African countries, in cities or in diamond and gold mines. You could say it is fairly widely distributed, in Africa and elsewhere. Some people are ‘promiscuous’, but most are not. So unless you accept redneckery like Hankins’ (which is something of an industry standard), HIV should also be much more evenly distributed, at least in African countries around where the virus seems to have emerged.

The patterns of HIV transmission suggest that there are additional modes of transmission aside from heterosexual sex. These may include unsafe healthcare, where skin piercing equipment is reused without sterilization, unsafe traditional practices that involve skin piercing, even unsafe cosmetic practices, such as ear and body piercing, tattooing, etc. But the patterns of transmission do not suggest levels of unsafe sexual behavior that would be beyond most people, in inclination, energy, even time.

So instead of asking why women are afraid to be diagnosed as HIV positive, or why ‘African’ men are angry (especially HIV negative ones), the international HIV community should ask how they have allowed themselves to be fooled by such tired old myths, such as those about ‘African’ sexuality or typical behavior of ‘African’ men. The HIV industry is still happy to test people and send them home, so they can tell their HIV negative husbands and partners that they have a sexually transmitted virus. They then have to persuade their family and community that they are not ‘promiscuous’. If the HIV industry didn’t believe them, why would their family or community?

The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Lisbon on the rights of the Patient states that: “Every person has the right to health education that will assist him/her in making informed choices about personal health and about the available health services. The education should include information about healthy lifestyles and about methods of prevention and early detection of illnesses. The personal responsibility of everybody for his/her own health should be stressed. Physicians have an obligation to participate actively in educational efforts.” Failing to inform people adequately means they take risks they needn’t take, are stigmatized because of their HIV status and are much less likely to accept treatment that keeps them alive, and reduces the risk of infecting others.

Of course people are afraid and angry, they are being told lies about HIV, about the people closest to them, and about ‘Africans’ and their superhuman ‘promiscuity’. UNAIDS, WHO and the rest know that heterosexual sex cannot account for levels of HIV in certain areas in Africa. So no more lies about concurrency, ‘traditional’ sexual practices, predominant ‘mores’, migratory patterns and the like. HIV can be transmitted through heterosexual sex, but it is much more easily spread through unsafe healthcare and other bloodborne modes of transmission. If people are not informed, they will continue to avoid diagnoses, life saving drug programs and anything else to do with HIV.

behavioral paradigm, HIV, institutional racism, unsafe healthcare

US, Protect Us from All Harm Reduction

1 Comment Posted by on May 9, 2017

‘Where harm reduction policies went up, hepatitis C (HCV) incidence went down, study finds’. Nothing very surprising about that, is there? Harm reduction strategies, such as free needles and syringes and substitution therapies for injecting drug users (IDU), safe healthcare, etc, reduce harm; sort of tautological, really.

But countries like the US have resisted providing support for harm reduction strategies, refused to put much money into them, and often refused to allow recipients of US donor funding to allocate money to harm reduction.

This refusal to adopt harm reduction strategies has been going on for decades, and could have reduced a lot of HIV transmission as well. The above article is about a study covering harm reduction among IDUs over a period of 25 years.

It finds that HCV infection rates remained high in two US cities and a Canadian city, but dropped in an Australian and a Dutch city. This is because harm reduction strategies were very limited in the US and Canada, but not in The Netherlands and Australia. Should I repeat that for those who continue to resist (till death…etc)?

Decades ago, perhaps even longer, objections to harm reduction strategies were based on the claim that, for example, making clean needles and syringes available would encourage use of injected drugs and even increase use, comprehensive sex education would increase unsafe sex, and the like.

Utterly ridiculous, and shown to be so time and time again. But that’s the sort of argument that conservative people (whether they would identify themselves as conservative or not), professional politicians and many religious people continue to cling to.

Some people were persuaded, perhaps for political rather than rational reasons, to drop their insistence on using these infantile arguments against harm reduction when HIV became the headline health issue, a status it still holds in many countries, but many were not.

Comparing HIV and HCV, hundreds of millions of people are infected with HCV, far more than the few tens of millions of people infected with HIV. Annual deaths from HIV in the US, which has the worst epidemic in the rich world, stand at over 12k; from HCV, the figure in 2014 was close to 20k.

HCV, unlike HIV, is curable. As with any infectious disease, treating people would reduce the number of new infections to the extent that the epidemic could be controlled, and kept at a much more manageable number (although eradication would, of course, be preferable).

But the treatment is so expensive that even most people in rich countries are not able to afford it. This was the case with HIV for a while, but big pharma still manages to make a very large profit, even after negotiating a very lucrative piece of PR about price reduction. So it seems likely that the same could be done for HCV drugs, should there ever be the political will to achieve this goal.

A combined harm reduction and cost reduction strategy would have a massive impact on HCV prevalence. Since HIV is so easily transmitted through IDU, this would at the same time address the second biggest contributor to the US HIV epidemic (the first being anal sex among men who have sex with men).

But another form of harm reduction, safe healthcare, would have an even greater impact on the HIV and the HCV pandemics. Far more people are infected lgobally with HCV through routes other than IDU, especially in high HIV prevalence countries. The highest HCV prevalence in the world is in Egypt, where it was mostly a result of unsafe healthcare.

Although the HIV politbureau of UNAIDS, WHO, CDC and others don’t like to talk about HIV transmission via unsafe healthcare in high HIV prevalence countries, except to bluntly deny it, it is likely that the rate of new infections would mysteriously drop like a stone in countries that adopt a well supported, well funded safe healthcare program.

If harm reduction strategies reduce harm, and this has been known for decades, why is there so much resistance? Skip the dumbass excuses about clean injecting equipment increasing injected drug use and comprehensive sex education increasing unsafe sex, it’s well demonstrated that the opposite is the case. So, what could UNAIDS, WHO and CDC have against HCV and HIV harm reduction strategies? Just the fact that they work?

behavioral paradigm, HCV, Hepatitis C, HIV, institutional racism, unsafe healthcare ,

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