International AIDS day

My beloved Aftonbladet has a big special, with the top headline:

Var sjätte sekund smittas någon

Every seven seconds someone is infected

I, for one, regret that we are not told the size of this such someone relative to Wales (the agreed international standard for such things).

According to their Flash animation, in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa >10% of the population is HIV+ (> 30% in Botswana!); according to me “AIDS” is still a singular noun.

Hi Raj, I know it is a singular! The bit you’ve quoted was just an artefact of me pasting some words in instead of the actual link (which I now can’t find). I’ve fixed the text, and I’ll insert the link when I can.

While discussing Africa and AIDS with someone with many years in planned parenthood I was shocked (just kidding) to learn how deep the culture war between safe sex and abstinence went. Even though safe sex approaches in most of Africa have done little to slow the tide of AIDS, no one wants to endorse Uganda who’s abstinence program has cut AIDS from 22% in 1992 to 7% in 2002. I’m not saying that abstinence alone is a good idea, but isn’t the WHO being a bunch of murderous (or at least manslaughterous) assholes for not also pushing abstinence?

That was the point in time when I realized that religious zealots don’t all worship the word “god”. Some worship their idealology.

debate on South Africa, expose in India on UN Aids figures

Bill Gates uses charity to fight generic drugs; US links AIDS assistance with GM foods; there was also a horrible article in the new yorker about pharm companies pressing for lowering the standards of clinical trials in africa on account of the coming apocalypse.

Jason,

Let me get this straight. You are saying that the main push of Uganda’s fight against AIDS has been condom use and that is why they were so successful? Does condom use explain the extremely low levels of teenage sex and monogomy (for Africa)?

Come on now, if you are going to challenge and chastise me, I want some links.

Jet, perhaps you could provide links. Where do your figures come from?

Jet,

Uganda’s program is presicely the kind that social conservatives usually like to attack, despite its effectiveness. They attack it because Uganda dares to mention condoms at all.

Let’s be perfectly clear about this: There are only two sides to the issue. One advocates abstinence only–with no mention of condoms, except to claim that they don’t work.

The other side says that abstinence is a perfectly effective strategy, but not one that is likely to be adopted–hence condoms can still reduce the harm. Uganda has taken the latter approach–and you are trying to muddle it with the former.

Similarly, you are either ignorant or lying when you suggest that “the WHO [is] being a bunch of murderous (or at least manslaughterous) assholes for not also pushing abstinence.” Here is proof:

http://www.who.int/entity/hiv/pub/prev_care/en/Condom_statement.pdf

It’s a WHO document describing condoms as part of an integrated set of strategies for reducing risk; these strategies also include abstinence and monogamy.

Similar documents can be found elsewhere at the WHO site, although I would encourage you to do the research for yourself in the future.

Jason,

Sorry, I couldn’t wait for a response, work is slow and I wanted to go ahead and prove my point.

Uganda is certainly not the poster child of the WHO and the left. Pat Roberston was fundamental in shaping the abstinence included anti-HIV program in Uganda according to the American Anthropological Association.

http://www.aaanet.org/press/an/infocus/hivaids/0310_feldmanaids.htm

“Uganda’s program is presicely the kind that social conservatives usually like to attack, despite its effectiveness. ”

Does anyone think I’ll hear an apology? Bush and Pat Roberston think Uganda is good, WHO and AAA think it is bad.

Now can we please start having the real debate over what needs to be done and stop squabling over history?

This is sure to fire up a storm, but this article:
http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/977BD288-6F7C-40D5-951B-9CD08E72719C.asp
seems to agree with reality that the WHO’s plan for combatting AIDS in Africa is not working and that deeper social changes need to be made. Since Africa isn’t Uganda and the Ugandan model can probably only be implemented in a few other nations, the real problem is poverty.

The answer to African AIDS is cheap coal plants, massive agricultural subsidies, an expansion of subsidized education Visas to Western schools, and hard lined promotion of Democracy.

Now that would solve HIV in Africa. Everything else is worse than useless. And in case you were looking for an example of “worse than useless” look at the ban on GM foods. How much money, blind children, and dead people did that BS cost?

I suspect I’ve read many of the same documents you have, Jet. My conclusion is that the U.S. conservatives are misreading Uganda, which clearly does promote condom use in the heterosexual population. If such a program were tried in the United States, you can bet that Robertson et al would attack it. So you’re right–you’re not getting an apology.

As to your conclusions about poverty being the root of AIDS, I actually quite agree with them. One of the best things the U.S. could do to fight global AIDS would be to end its domestic agricultural subsidies, allowing African agriculture to compete better on the world market.

Catholocism and Big Pharma’s contribution to today;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4038375.stm

New York, New York, so good they had to inject HIV+ 3 month old children with experimental drug cocktails.
Civilised world.

Credit where it’s due, for sure:

In an interview, one of the Vatican’s most senior cardinals Alfonso Lopez Trujillo suggested HIV could even pass through condoms.

“The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the ‘net’ that is formed by the condom,” he says.

The cardinal, who is president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, suggests that governments should urge people not to use condoms.

(Did the Vatican ever administer some remedial physics to this clown? The last I saw they were steadfastly declining to.)

Actually, the effectiveness of Uganda’s AIDS model is much overrated. I blogged about it at

http://www.livejournal.com/users/rfmcdpei/508111.html

working from this article for the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,1310602,00.html

Critical paragraph:

“Beatrice Were, head of HIV/Aids in Uganda for Action Aid, agreed the [figure of 17.1%] was too high, but she said the official measurement overlooked women unable to reach maternity clinics because of poverty, remoteness or the war in the north. “I would say the infection rate is between 10 and 12%.”

Europeans shouldn’t get too complacent either.

The UNAIDS AIDS Epidemic Update shows that in western Europe HIV infections acquired through heterosexual contact more than doubled between 1997 and 2002. The report gives a frightening global snapshot of the disease (though with some bright points) and is a free download.

The EU and member states are pumping money into the Global Fund on Aids, TB and malaria – proper order – but so far the EU’s actions to fight the disease within Europe seem to be focused on the soft stuff; sharing information, calling for education, etc. etc. An action plan is expected next spring…

Randy said on his blog “Abstinence might well be a good ideal to encounter, but it surely cannot be the only ideal.”

Why do you think Uganda’s only ideal is abstinence? What are the alternatives and what leads you to believe they are not already embracing those alternatives?