Unhappy fact about Aids in Africa. A lot of women are exposed to HIV by philandering husbands and can't do a thing about protecting themselves. The men won't wear condoms. In fact, the women don't even dare ask them to. So there's been huge enthusiasm for the idea of a microbicide - a virus-killing gel women could use before sex. Women especially - like Claire Short, when she was Britain's international development secretary - threw their weight behind it.

But in December a big trial in four African countries of a promising microbicide collapsed. The wonderful Professor Gita Ramjee, who has run five different big microbicide trials at her centre in Durban, was quite distraught. This is where I wrote about it.