A counsellor from Bradford is travelling to eastern Africa to bring his expertise to a project aimed at preventing the spread of HIV, the virus which leads to Aids.

Mark Nixon, who works as a social services counsellor at the genito-urinary medicine clinic at Bradford's St Luke's Hospital, will spend three months in Somaliland, on the Horn of Africa.

The scheme is part of an international aid project which looks at providing counselling services around HIV and Aids.

Mark, 42, will be training trainers who will then help to prevent the spread of the HIV virus through a programme of education.

He said: "We work in three areas: HIV prevention, HIV testing and dealing with people who are HIV positive.

"Because Somaliland was in conflict at the time when HIV became rampant among neighbouring African countries, it didn't spread at the same rate.

"And that is the way they want it to stay now the situation is more settled."

Somaliland, which has a population of three million and is about the size of Wales, has a comparatively low HIV infection rate of about one per cent of the population.

Mark added: "This compares to about 30 per cent in some neighbouring countries, such as Ethiopia, and 0.1 per cent in this country."

Somaliland has only 74 doctors for its three million inhabitants.

"The main point of the project is to try to limit the spread of infection through education in a country in which health care is basic where it exists. Treatment is not really an option."

Mark will be employed for his three-month spell by the International Co-operation for Development in Hargeisa, the capital of the Muslim country. A former languages teacher, he has worked at Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust for 11 years as an HIV counsellor and will return to his job after the time in Africa.