(no subject)

"Majengo is the main battleground and a woman called Agatha is on the front
line. Her life is sordid beyond imagination. A prostitute who works out of one
of Majengo's tin shacks, smaller than a double bed, she makes an unlikely
medical heroine. Agatha is 52 and a grandmother, but still has sex - when she
is lucky, she says - with 40 clients a day. What makes her even more remarkable
is that, in tests systematically conducted over two decades, she has never
tested positive for HIV."

"She is one of a group of 50 prostitutes from Majengo who have demonstrated a
miraculous resistance to an illness that has decimated their clients and killed
off 95 per cent of the female competition. Studied by researchers from the
University of Nairobi and the University of Oxford, they were all found to have
an inordinate quantity of white blood cells perfectly honed to kill
HIV-infected cells. The information obtained from the women has been converted
in laboratories at Nairobi University's Faculty of Medicine into a trial
vaccine. The first tests on humans began this year. No other project in the
world is more advanced or offers more hope that the holy grail, a lasting
solution to Aids, may be found."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1091353,00.html