The AIDs pandemic is in decline, declare UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation in a new report. And guess who’s responsible? UNAIDS and the WHO.

Why anybody should believe figures on HIV prevalence from either of these bodies is a mystery. In 2007, UNAIDS reversed its position, admitting that the prevalence figures it had been publishing for years had been hopelessly wrong. It cut its estimates of the number infected by HIV by more than 6 million, at a stroke.
 
While in mid-2005 UNAIDS was talking about a “quantum worsening” of the AIDs pandemic, it now says the disease actually peaked in 1996 and has been in decline since, a change it has been slow to acknowledge.
 
HIV is a terrible affliction, but exaggerations of its likely impact outside those in high-risk categories has done huge damage, not least in diverting resources from diseases that are easier to treat or prevent, and in misdirecting HIV resources into changing the sexual behaviour of whole populations – a hopeless endeavour – rather than focussing on those most at risk.
 
Now Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS (pictured), admits that prevention programming is often “off the mark” and should be directed to where it will do the most good. Better late than never, I suppose.