acidity of vaginal fluid, so should not be an irritant.
Dr Helene Gayle is a senior advisor at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who are financing the trials. She said: "A cheap barrier chemical like this could allow poor women to take HIV prevention into their own hands."
page 4 of 8
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Did dirty needles leave tracks across Africa?
As much as 40 per cent of HIV transmission in Africa could be due to
unsterilised needles rather than sex, a recent group of authors has claimed.
Dr David Gisselquist and colleagues, writing in the British Medical Journal,
say that global HIV prevention efforts face failure without campaigns
to "reduce unnecessary and unsterile injections," and criticise
the "narrow focus on condoms and heterosexual transmission"
in Africa.
There is significant evidence for HIV transmission via medical procedures
in Africa, say the authors. They point to significant numbers of HIV positive
children with negative mothers: 'non-trivial' rates of HIV in young adults
who report no sexual experience: and studies which, by demonstrating that
heterosexual sex is a relatively poor way of transmitting the virus, fail
to explain the whole of the explosive growth of HIV infection in some
populations.
"Although co-factors such as sexually transmitted infections and
lack of circumcision may boost heterosexual transmission, they do not
seem sufficient to explain Africa's HIV epidemic," continues Gisselquist.
He estimates that 20 to 40 per cent of HIV infections in Africa may be
due to such practices as the repeated use of needles without sterilisation
and injecting anti-
biotics rather than giving them orally. This contrasts
