A quarter of a century after the outbreak of AIDS, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major AIDS organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO’s department of HIV/AIDS said there will be no generalised epidemic of AIDS in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

One could argue that the lack of a pandemic in the West was the fruit of the awareness campaign, not the lack of a credible threat.

In Russia and South Africa, AIDS could have been avoided if their governments had acted competently. Both nations saw the disease spread long after it had become known in the rest of the world.