Leading scientists battling the world’s worst AIDS epidemic have called on African leaders to spearhead a month-long sexual abstinence campaign, saying it would substantially reduce new infections.
Epidemiologists Alan Whiteside and Justin Parkhurst cited evidence that due to “viral-load spikes,” a newly infected person is most likely to transmit HIV in the month after they were exposed to it. A month-long campaign could potentially cut new infections by up to 45 percent.
Whiteside’s research with Parkhurst, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is anchored not in condom use but in studies of religious groups, such as Muslims who abstain from sex during Ramadan and Zimbabwe’s Marange Apostolic sect, which bans sex during Passover.
According to UNAIDS, predominantly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia have an HIV prevalence rate of 0.2 percent. The low rate has previously been attributed to the universal practice of male circumcision. However, Whiteside says that practicing Muslim men are also protected from HIV by the ban on sex during the daylight hours of Ramadan, as well as strict teachings on alcohol use, homosexuality and extramarital sex.
In stark contrast, predominantly Christian South Africa has an adult prevalence rate of 18.1 percent and 5.7 million people living with AIDS. Zimbabwe has a similar prevalence but members of the Marange sect have lower rates than the surrounding population. Swaziland has the highest number of infections in the world, with a rate of 26.1 percent.
Whiteside, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said he was seeking the support of kings and presidents.
“This would be a national campaign with buy-in from leadership at every level, from the president or king, through church leaders and business, down to community leaders,” he said. “This kind of initiative could provide hyper-endemic countries with a one-off, short-term adaptation that is cost-effective, easy to monitor and does not create additional stigma.”
Whiteside said a month-long pledge to use a condom could also be effective.
“The main thing is to agree on a bounded period in which the entire population would live by the same rule. The success of the World Cup in South Africa is proof that social mobilization can work,” he said.
“We see this kind of initiative as a way of breaking the cycle. We think a good month to do it would be during the southern African spring, in October or November. We would like to try it,” said Derek von Wissell, director of Swaziland’s National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS.
He rejected suggestions that a campaign of abstinence would be perceived as moralistic or would be in danger of being hijacked by churches.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion