In a small room, in a modest, but well-maintained building in Central Cairo, a phone rings. The caller, a woman, suspects that her husband has been having sex with someone else. She is concerned that she might be at risk of catching hiv. The call that lasts no more than five minutes is not unusual on Egypt's national hiv/Aids hotline.

Supported by unicef, the hotline provides information on hiv to callers in Egypt and other North African countries. The disease is still widely seen as a "foreign' problem, nothing for ordinary Egyptians to worry about. But a number of factors