The Kansas City Star examines HIV education and care in Egypt, where “the Ministry of Health says there are 2,700 cases, but the true number is estimated conservatively at more than four times that — and growing.” The newspaper writes that while “HIV education has become an international cause throughout Africa, where the rate of infection devastated many sub-Saharan nations but is being brought under control by concerted efforts on prevention and treatment,” similar efforts “are largely nonexistent in North Africa and the Middle East, and AIDS activists now worry that the rise of a conservative Islamic government in Egypt, where former longtime Muslim Brotherhood member Mohammed Morsi became the country’s first democratically elected president over the summer, will make matters worse.”

“The U.N. is leading the AIDS education effort here, and there have been efforts by individuals to bring attention to the issue,” the Kansas City Star notes, adding, “According to one survey, 57 percent of doctors here think that HIV can be transmitted through a mosquito bite, according to a footnote in a U.N. report,” and “[m]any patients, unaware of the symptoms or risks, learn only by chance that they’ve been infected, when a blood test required for a visa or a medical procedure comes back positive.” The newspaper writes, “Ehab Abdel Rahman, the director of the HIV program at the Ministry of Health, balks at the suggestion that Egypt isn’t doing enough. … The blame, he said, lies with patients who try to diagnose and medicate themselves.” But “Omnia Kamal, a Morsi adviser on women’s issues and a member of the committee that’s charged with drawing up the country’s new constitution, offers a different view. In a nation plagued with economic programs and a litany of social issues, AIDS is not a priority, she said” (Youssef/Ismail, 10/22).