Femi Soyinka, one of Nigeria's leading human rights activists, has decided to take a public stand against the discrimination suffered by more than one million of his countrymen and women who are living with AIDS. Soyinka, a former professor of medicine at Ife University in southwestern Nigeria, told IRIN that people living with the HIV virus and AIDS were often shunned by other members of society and treated like criminals. But he warned that their marginalisation was a major factor causing the continued spread of the epidemic in Africa's most populous country.