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Purpose This paper aims to understand and explore the causal relationship of elements responsible for the macro vicious cycle of poverty in Guinea-Bissau, and discuss policies to break it.Design/methodology/approach The methodology used in this study is based on the system dynamics simulation paradigm.Findings Breaking the Guinean poverty cycle requires a multifaceted approach involving more resources and the building of several national capabilities. Traditional approaches tend to fail.Research limitations/implications Limitations come from the level of abstraction used in the model, which does not detail the processes for building specific capabilities and their interrelationships, and the necessary exclusion of variables that may have an impact in the process. Considering implications, the study models the evolution of human development index (HDI) in Guinea-Bissau, linking it to the economy and political sectors and allowing the simulation of different scenarios.Practical implications The study presents a critical stance towards common recommendations from international agencies, and it provides a blueprint for development of more effective public policies.Social implications Overcoming the poverty trap in sub-Saharan countries remains a challenge for the international community. The study aims at helping in the process of integrating different frameworks into a compact and manageable model.Originality/value The study contributes to the system dynamics and economic development literatures by presenting an integrative model of human development in Guinea-Bissau. There is no study in the system dynamics literature modelling the relationship of HDI to economy and political sectors while different and contradictory points of view characterize the economics literature, leaving well-meaning public officials in Guinea-Bissau at a loss of mental models to tackle the poverty trap in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a paper published 20 years ago this week in "Science," Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris announced that he had isolated the virus that causes AIDS. Now, after a priority dispute with Robert Gallo, an American researcher who claimed to have discovered it independently, and who called it HTLV-3, it has become more familiar under its compromise moniker, the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV. In the decades since Dr Montagnier's paper, HIV has run riot. The latest report on the epidemic, issued on May 13th by the Global HIV Prevention Working Group, a committee of the great and good, reiterated how bad things are. If nothing changes, the world faces 45m new infections between now and 2010. And what needs to change, naturally, is that more money must be spent on prevention. In 1986 a second AIDS-causing agent, now known as HIV-2, was isolated by Dr Montagnier's laboratory. And an important aspect of this virus's spread has just been elucidated in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Unlike HIV-1, which seems to be a chimpanzee virus that leapt the species barrier to infect people, HIV-2 came from a monkey called the sooty mangabey. Its spread coincided with Guinea-Bissau's war of independence from Portugal, which began in 1963 and went on until 1974. War, with its attendant movement of armies of sexually active young men, provides an ideal climate for the spread of a virus such as HIV-2.