The latest official AIDS epidemic update report from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) is dated December 2007. Here are some of the statistics:

• Adults and children estimated to be living with HIV in 2007 in Sub-Saharan Africa: 22.5 million (even as high as 24.3 million) or 70% of global total.

• Estimated number of adults and children newly infected with HIV in 2007 in Sub-Saharan Africa: 1.7 million (can be as high as 2.4 million) or, again, 70% of global total.

• Estimated adult and child deaths from AIDS during 2007 in Sub-Saharan Africa: 1.6 million (can be as high as 2 million) or almost all of global total.

This means that practically all those estimated to be newly infected with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2007 are also estimated to be dead in 2007.

Staggering. Maddening.

AIDS is no longer the Gay Curse in America. It is now purported to be wiping out Africa – a place that is also riddled with tyrants, droughts, famines, desertification, civil wars, genocides, and millions of refugees.

Using UN estimates, the figures can definitely seem maddening.

For instance:

(1) These are figures in Kenya (circa 1998) that speak of the AIDS scourge:

• 480 Kenyans would die of AIDS each day.

• 175,000 Kenyans would die of AIDS every year.

• Three million Kenyans would have died of AIDS since 1981. (The fact is that, in Kenya by 1998, there had been 81,492 diagnosed AIDS cases since 1981, and many of these people remained alive and well.)

• A Kenyan dies of AIDS every three minutes. (If Kenyans were dying at this rate, there would be more than twice as many dead Kenyans in just one year than have ever been actually diagnosed with AIDS in the entire period of time known as the AIDS epidemic.)

(2) In 1987, the WHO estimated there were 1 million HIV positives in Uganda, the nation then considered the epicenter of AIDS. Ten years later, WHO estimates for Uganda remained unchanged at 1 million HIV positives while the total of actual AIDS cases through 1999 were less than 55,000 in the country of more than 20 million people.

(3) Facts were overwhelming. 250,000 South Africans had died of AIDS in 1999 – a quarter-million deaths in a single year.

AIDS in Africa is a unique thing. It is far more appalling than the information given us that “6,600 people will die today in Africa due to HIV/AIDS.”

AIDS in Africa is diagnosed by four clinical symptoms: diarrhea, fever, persistent cough, and weight loss of more than 10% over two months. These conditions are rampant in Africa. These illnesses are a result of parasitic infections, unsanitary drinking water and bathing waters, as well as malnutrition. These symptoms are the effects of poverty and other problems that have troubled Africa and other developing areas of the world for many decades.

HIV tests are not required for an AIDS diagnosis in Africa.

Actually, the most current statistics for global total based on the WHO information is quite far from the estimates as of December 2007 – or nearly nine months ago to date.

By the end of 2007, an estimated 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV. Records after December 2007 state that only some 2 million died of AIDS in that year.

Where lies the rub?

In an earlier installment of this series, I noted that AIDS conjures up the image of huge numbers, unlike cancer and most other conditions, because

AIDS reports typically use cumulative totals. In other words, a current year’s cases or fatalities are added to the sum total of all AIDS diagnoses or deaths that have ever occurred, automatically creating a larger figure and the impression that AIDS constantly rises.

Also, estimates and projections are frequently used in place of actual AIDS numbers. For example, the 1999 United Nations AIDS Report estimates that 2.5 million people throughout the world died of AIDS in 1998, while the November 1999 World Health Organization (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Record reports that only 2.2 million people worldwide have ever received a diagnosis of AIDS. The UN estimate is widely promoted while the actual WHO case count is rarely publicized.

More realistically:

(1) According to epidemiological estimates from the WHO and the World Bank (WB), Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world with the highest level of mortality. The top killer diseases in the region are malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough/pertussis, African sleeping sickness or tsetse, meningitis, and tetanus.

(2) While Africa is the frequent subject of dramatic media reports, actual numbers of diagnosed AIDS cases on the continent are relatively unremarkable. For example, 1981 through 1999 cumulative AIDS cases for South Africa, the new epicenter of AIDS, total just 12,825.

(3) AIDS is not, as many believe, Africa’s primary health threat; several million cases of tuberculosis and malaria are reported each year in Africa while total AIDS cases on the continent for the entire AIDS epidemic hover just above one-half million. For example, in 1996 there were 170,000 cases of tuberculosis reported in Ethiopia and less than 850 cases of AIDS; South Africa’s tuberculosis cases topped 91,000 compared to 729 diagnosed cases of AIDS. In fact, AIDS is not the leading cause of illness or death in any African country. Because of the high incidence of exposure to malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases that produce false positive results on HIV tests, many mainstream scientists question the validity of HIV testing in Africa whenever HIV testis is actually done. Cases of tuberculosis, malaria, and measles far outnumber the cases of AIDS in Africa.

(4) The 1999 WHO report states that the actual number of diagnosed AIDS cases on the African continent was about equal to the total for AIDS in America, even though Africa had more than two times the population of the USA. Africa is often cited as a worst case example of what could happen in America despite figures that demonstrate that 99.5% of Africans do not have AIDS, and among Africans who test HIV positive, 97% do not have AIDS.

(5) In July 2007, the Washington Post reported that a decade-long global initiative to discourage HIV positive mothers from breastfeeding caused a 20-fold increase in deaths among children in Botswana in 2006. After a season of heavy rains, government surveys of water pipes in 26 villages in northeastern Botswana found contamination in every one. Tests on sick children in the area revealed the presence of dangerous waterborne pathogens such as cryptosporidium and E coli. In one village alone, 30 percent of formula fed babies died that year while all those receiving breast-milk remained alive and well. By pushing free formula as an AIDS prevention measure, health experts interfered with the once universal practice of breastfeeding, a plan “that left children more vulnerable to other, more immediate lethal diseases” such as diarrhea caused by consumption of septic water.

Sadly for the world, especially Africa, AIDS is really a political disease.

All information stated above comes from the decades-long debates on the validity of the HIV hypothesis. Simply google “myth of AIDS” and find out for yourself the many points and issues aimed at disclosing the hoax.

The Human Rumor Virus: The AIDS Lie (Part 1)

The Myth of the ‘AIDS Test’: The AIDS Lie (Part 2)

Who’s Afraid of AIDS?: The AIDS Lie (Part 3)