Every day in Kenya the newspaper obituary pages are full of portraits of the dead. But pictures of the elderly are rare and it is young faces who stare back at readers.
In Kenya, 16 people each hour die of AIDS. But AIDS sufferers are also falling victim to a new scourge as unscrupulous doctors peddle unlikely "cures" and prey on the fears and ignorance of the dying.
From physicians offering supposedly advanced technology to potions brewed up by village witch-doctors, the variety of "cures" on offer is enormous.
One of the most controversial figures is the British scientist, Dr Basil Wainwright (66), who lives in a fortress-like house in the upmarket Nairobi suburb of Karen, named after the author of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen.
Kenyan health authorities have banned Dr Wainwright from practising medicine in the country and shut down his clinics.
They have condemned his methods as useless and dangerous, possibly even lethal.
But Dr Wainwright still continues with research and his claims of a cure so excited interest among Kenyan AIDS sufferers that a group of them recently launched a court case to get his treatment unbanned.
Dr Wainwright says he has discovered a revolutionary technique of purifying the body with oxygen that can cure AIDS, cancer and a host of other illnesses.
Swindon-born Dr Wainwright, who did not return repeated messages left on his answerphone, has served jail sentences in Britain for accounting fraud and in the US for practising medicine without a licence.
In a local newspaper interview earlier this year, he claimed to have cured 351 patients of AIDS, including a family friend of President Yeltsin.
But AIDS activists are worried many people may be misled, as their fear and ignorance are easily exploited.
So far, the only proven effective drugs in treating AIDS are expensive Western medicines that are not widely available in Africa and are far beyond what millions of Kenyans carrying the disease can afford.
"Every day there are different claims and we have traditional healers and other doctors who say that they can cure AIDS. That is very wrong," said Mrs Catherine Solomons, who works on the Kenyan AIDS project of the UN children's charity, UNICEF.
The sheer scale of Kenya's problem creates a ready market for those claiming to have found a cure. Sitting in his clinic in a rundown residential area of Nairobi, Dr X.J. Jin openly claims his Chinese herbal medicine cures AIDS. "This medicine can change your life," Dr Jin said. "It can lengthen people's lives and in many cases it completely cures them of the AIDS virus."
Dr Jin, whose clinic got a boost in attendance after he made similar claims on local television, has also placed adverts in Kenya's main daily newspaper.
"A true certified drug for HIV and AIDS," the advert reads, before going on to warn: "My friend, early treatment is best for you."
Local Kenyan healers and elders are also offering cures for AIDS. In the village of Busiada near the Ugandan border one woman paid £700, a fortune in rural Kenya, to a local witch-doctor in a fruitless attempt to be cured.
Aside from potions and charms, some traditional healers say that men infected with AIDS can cure themselves by having sex with a virgin.
The practice has led to a rise in AIDS among young girls, who are often raped, or married off by their families to AIDS-infected men willing to pay a hefty price.
"Marrying off girls to such men is tantamount to signing their death warrant," said Mr Kiprop Likoria, a district officer in western Kenya who has dealt with several such cases.
AIDS activists say there is only one effective way to combat the claims of those offering supposed cures.
"We must educate people. We have to work with government and local groups to create awareness about avoiding the disease and be truthful about what treatments are available," said Mrs Solomons.