The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

I think it’s a given most people understand condoms aren’t 100% effective. No prophylactic device is 100% effective. But the main targets of HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns are showing themselves reluctant to use condoms to start. And perhaps because the correlation between poor education and poor health care tends to impact Af-Ams to a greater degree, the virus should be considered an imminent public threat. I believe providing prison inmates with condoms (as part of proper health education) is one practical measure that would stem rates of HIV transmission.

While any legitimate discussion of HIV/AIDS is welcome, I’m concerned a misplaced emphasis on certain sexual acts or sexual orientation/preferences makes discovery and treatment of the virus difficult. There are undoubtedly many people who rationalize away their risk of infection because they’re not homo- or bisexual; neither do they engage in anal sex. Furthermore, it seems people understand on an intuitive level anal sex, homosexuality, bisexuality, etc. aren’t causes of HIV in themselves and again assess their risk of infection as ‘low’.

This is why I think that part of the focus SHOULD be on the act.

(MIB, please don’t think that I was “piling on” you with all the references below. Honestly, I did this more for my knowledge on this issue. I kinda got on a roll )

***UPDATE***

While I do agree with you that one has to be careful not to categorize this as a “gay only” disease, I think that we as a society have to become honest with ourselves in pointing out some of the hot beds of this awful disease. Folks that hammer others for stating the obvious here do more harm than good in their quest to be “sensitive”. This is why I believe that it is going to take a two-pronged approach.

=====

“World-wide, at least two-thirds of all recorded cases of HIV-transmission have been amongst heterosexuals. In Australia however, about 85% of all cases of HIV transmission have occurred through unprotected anal sex between men. The impact this has had on gay men and the gay community in the last fifteen years has been immense.” (source)

====

Yichang — The HIV infection rate among gay men in China is climbing at an alarming rate largely due to a lack of awareness about the disease, according to an expert on homosexual studies.

The HIV infection rate is nearing 1.5 percent among sexually active homosexual men, Zhang Beichuan, a professor with Qingdao University’s Medical School, told an anti-AIDS forum in Yichang.

“The health authorities have to do something to curb the rising infection rate among gay men, who account for two to four percent of the sexually active adult male population,” Zhang said.

[...]

And it seems a lack of general education is not to blame. “About half of them were college graduates,” Zhang said. (source)

====

More from Australia -

SYDNEY’S gay community has an infection rate of HIV that is similar to that of countries in Africa.

[...]

Last year in NSW, 954 people were diagnosed with HIV and nearly three-quarters of them caught the disease through homosexual contact. By comparison only 109 people in NSW were reported to have had the mumps last year.

“For gay men, HIV is a massive epidemic,” Dr Prestage said. “If you are a gay man living in central Sydney, you are living with rates of HIV that are equivalent to sub-Saharan Africa.” (more…)

====

From the CDC

“In the United States, racial/ethnic minority populations account for an increasing proportion of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) cases, including cases among men who have sex with men (MSM) (1). This report presents recent trends in AIDS incidence and deaths among MSM who belong to racial/ethnic minority populations*, and compares data on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnoses with AIDS diagnoses during 1996-1998 among racial/ethnic minority MSM in the 25 states** that have conducted confidential HIV surveillance and AIDS case surveillance since 1994. The findings indicate that among MSM, non-Hispanic black and Hispanic men accounted for an increasing proportion of AIDS cases and had smaller proportionate declines in AIDS incidence and deaths from 1996 to 1998. Of HIV and AIDS diagnoses among racial/ethnic minority MSM, the proportion who are young (aged 13-24 years) is higher than among white MSM. (source)

====

From the British Medical Journal -

“In most developed countries it was gay men who were affected earliest and most severely by HIV. In the early 1980s, incidence rates of HIV of 20% a year were described, leading to a prevalence of up to 50% in gay men in some US cities.1 Death and disability became part of life in gay communities. As soon as AIDS was recognised as being a sexually transmissible infection, education and prevention campaigns were rapidly implemented. In many countries, these were mobilised by gay organisations in the face of government inaction. These campaigns led to large scale declines in the practice of unprotected anal intercourse, which had previously been the norm, and declines in the incidence of sexually transmissible infections, including HIV.12 This behaviour change was so successful in reducing the incidence of HIV that gay communities became the example of what is possible in HIV prevention in the community.” (source)

=====

San Francisco Data Shows HIV Rates Still Rising, Experts Say – Statistical Data Included

=====

This is just extra—

WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 22, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Since 1989, more than 4 billion condoms have been shipped to sub-Saharan Africa, yet the number of HIV-infected people continues to grow at an epidemic rate.

This has led one expert to state that the exploding growth of the disease was one of the greatest failures in the history of public health.

[...]

One source Browder cites states the findings succinctly: “So far, there’s no good evidence that condoms will reverse population-wide epidemics like those in sub-Saharan Africa.”

In fact, Browder argues that countries with the most condoms per man have the highest HIV infection rates.

Soaring rates

Between 1994 and 1998, the number of free condoms distributed in South Africa as part of a national campaign skyrocketed to 198 million from 6 million.

However, statistics released in 2005 showed that between 1997 and 2002, death rates from HIV/AIDS in South Africa increased 57%. (source)

[please note that while I am not hanging my hat on this one article, I still find in strange that despite the massive amount of condoms that have been passed out in that part of the world, the HIV infection rate continues to climb. If this is the case, why are we trying to do the same thing in our prison systems?]