Once, in a small village in Hajah, north Yemen, a man started to lose weight and gradually became extremely skinny. People in the village started wondering about the reasons behind his sudden obvious physical changes. They keep asking until one of them suggested that this man might have AIDS. The rumor spread all over the village, and one day, the villagers seized him and tied him to a tree. They prevented anyone from coming near him, thinking he could transmit the infection to others by touch. He remained tied to the tree for several days, only supplied with food and water by his brother who finally appealed to the villagers to rescue him from certain death. The man's relatives from Sana'a came and took him to have an HIV test. The result was negative.

This was a real story retold by a Yemeni living with HIV. He was talking to a group of twenty of police leaders and personnel last week at the National Population Council during a training course that aimed to raise awareness about HIV.