A Year in AIDS Part 2 — The Bad News

The changes outlined in Part One of this series are significant developments in the fight against HIV. Scientists are making huge strides and nations are rising to the challenge of combating the virus. With such progress being made, the eradication of HIV may be in our near future.  Now, let’s turn to the challenges faced by those who fight for HIV prevention.

The Pope

In March 2009, while in Africa, Pope Benedict XVI misled thousands of followers concerning the effectiveness of using condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.  His statements on the topic set off a media firestorm and backlash.

Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.  “You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the plane heading to Yaoundé. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”  The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.

The Roman Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms as part of its overall teaching against artificial contraception. Senior Vatican officials have advocated fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as crucial weapons in the fight against AIDS.

Many understood the pope’s comments as offering a scientific rather than moralistic reading of the situation. The pope has clarified that his comments were meant to provide a moralistic perspective.  But, many followers do not perceive a difference between the two.  Advocates of prevention worried that the pope’s comments would have an adverse effect, for instance if a man infected with HIV heard the pope’s comments and decided to stop using condoms because the pope had said they only make AIDS worse.

Domestic Statistics

Most Americans have no real sense of the population of HIV+ individuals in the USA.  HIV infections are present in approximately 1 of every 300 people.  In the US, we have a changing face of AIDS, which increasingly affects people of color disproportionately.

In the United States, approximately 1.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, including 280,000 women. Women now account for more than one in four new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in America — up from only 8 percent in 1985. HIV/AIDS also disproportionately affects women of color. African Americans and Hispanics represent only a quarter of the U.S. population, but they account for 82 percent of AIDS cases among women. Additionally, African-American women are diagnosed with AIDS at a rate 23 times that of Caucasian females and four times that of Hispanic women. Moreover, adolescent women represent 40 percent of AIDS cases reported among people aged 13 to 19 in the United States.

The prevalence of HIV infection among people of color is yet another barrier faced by a population for which discrimination is already a problem.  Increased stigma and discrimination is also a barrier for the LGBTQ community.

New Battlegrounds

Despite trending down overall, new geographic areas have arisen that have a high prevalence of seroconversion.   One of these is Indonesia.

The number of HIV-Aids cases in Indonesia is rising, according to the government in Jakarta. And U.N. officials say it is spreading far more quickly through sexual intercourse rather than drug use, which they say is a cause for alarm. The latest figures show there are at least 290,000 people in Indonesia infected with HIV.

Global management of HIV is like the hydra of Greek mythology, cut off a head and two grow back in its place.  Controlling the virus will mean managing all of its potential and actual manifestations.

Conclusion

Great strides have been taken in the last year to combat the spread of HIV.   However, this disease is still a significant foe, one about whom we cannot afford to forget.  We must recommit ourselves and our resources to banishing HIV from the human experience.