By Jonah Fisher

NAIROBI, June 3 (Reuters) – Tests on Africans in refugee camps found that contrary to popular belief the AIDS rate among refugees was lower than the general population in Africa, a U.N. expert said on Thursday.

Prostitution, increased incidents of rape, low condom use and the scarcity of healthcare in the camps were all thought to have created conditions for HIV/AIDS to spread rapidly.

"It's been assumed for many years that because refugees are seen as behaviourally at a higher risk that they must have a higher infection rate. That is not the case," said Paul Spiegel, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees' (UNHCR) senior HIV/AIDS technical officer.

Until recently UNHCR did not carry out testing in refugee camps for fear of further stigmatising them.

But in the last two years tests have been conducted on pregnant women in seven camps across eastern and southern Africa. The results were then compared with infection rates among the local population.

In five of the seven cases the rate was significantly lower among the refugees.

"There is huge reduction in mobility and accessibility for refugees," Spiegel said.

"In Sierra Leone and Angola, for example, you've lost the infrastructure. Refugee men can't so easily go to urban areas sleep with commercial sex workers and then come back and infect their wives."

Kakuma camp in northern Kenya houses 80,000 Sudanese refugees. Tests showed infection rates inside the camp were just five percent compared with 18 percent among the surrounding Kenyan population.

In refugee camps at Dadaab in western Kenya, roughly 120,000 Somalis are housed. The UNHCR tests found infection rates among the refugees was 0.5 percent, compared with four percent in the neighbouring town of Garissa.

The United Nations AIDS group estimates about 30 million people have HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

"For many years countries have denied the existence of AIDS in their community and have tended to blame people who are coming from outside," said Njogu Paterson, UNHCR's HIV/AIDS coordinator for East Africa. "They looked for a scapegoat and they found one among the refugees."

It is estimated there are 4.5 million refugees in 29 countries across Africa. The biggest hosting country is Tanzania, which has an estimated half a million people from both Rwanda and Burundi.

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