With some trepidation after the last ribbon-day thread, I note that today is the International Day of Action against HIV/AIDS, aka World AIDS Day. All around the world, people today will wear red ribbons to acknowledge that there is still much to be done in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.
It’s been 13 years since red ribbons to promote AIDS awareness debuted at the Tony Awards in New York, a promotion so effective that other awareness campaigns adopted the concept with gusto, resulting in the plethora of ribbon campaigns currently filling the calendar.
The artists sought to create an image which would be simple, yet bold, able to make an impact wherever it was seen. Red was chosen to symbolise blood and danger. The tails of the ribbon pointing down was chosen to symbolise life flowing away.
This year the theme is ‘HIV/AIDS: Let’s talk about it: many faces, different stories’.
HIV is a virus that can be contracted by both men and women, of any age, and any demographic. While there are now many effective treatments (antiretrovirals) available, people living with HIV/AIDS continue to experience a variety of health problems. This year’s theme and sub-theme have been designed to remind people that HIV/AIDS remains a serious disease for which there is still no cure, and that prevention remains the best defence. It also aims to inform people about the care and support services that are available for people affected by HIV, and that people living with HIV/AIDS need encouragement, understanding and acceptance.
So, let’s talk about it. And wear a ribbon.
tigs,
did i read that infection rates had INCREASED in Oz, especially in the gay scene in the last decade. it’s a real worry if young kids, think that HIV/Aids is just like some other STDs, that can be treated with drugs etc…
i’d like to remember Nick Greiner and Bob Hawke, being the NSW Premier and PM at the time, who introduced the world’s best public health campaigns, especially in NSW, so this country had one of the lowest HIV/Aids infection rates in the western world. Needle exchanges, free condoms, the grim reaper TV campaign etc.
Those first needle exchange programs in Darlinghurst and the X, at the time, basically stopped the spread from the gay scene into the sex worker/IV scene, and across into the wider community. Which is how the infection spread was spread in all other western countries.
Vale Bruce (Headboy). I didn’t know at the time, how much you did to protect us, when we didnt know any better.
I just pay tribute to my dear friend and colleague (you know who you are) …24 years HIV positive and still making the world a better place.
xx sc.
“HIV is a virus that can be contracted by both men and women, of any age, and any demographic.”
the “we’re all at risk” theory of HIV/AIDS is nonsense
Medical epidemiology is not meant to be a political tool. Its purpose is to tell us the extent of sickness and death from a given cause and to define the risks. If homosexuals and IVDAs are the prime risk group, that fact must be stated as plainly as saying that only infants get SIDS. And thats why Bob Hawkes Needle exchange programs were successful
The prime beneficiaries of good AIDS epidemiology are homosexuals and IVDAs. How can it possibly be considered compassionate to pretend otherwise?
Cricketers wearing the ribbons which is good.
Because we’re all at risk.
Have a look at the infection profile in Asia or Africa or PNG or the Pacific Islands.
Max, the vast majority of people living with HIV, globally, contracted it sexually via heterosex and women – often married women – form the most significant at risk group in many countries.
In Australia, around 80% of the 15,000 people living with HIV contracted it homosexually but there are also several hundred men and women who acquired it heterosexually.
Australia has one of the lowest rates of IVD-sourced HIV seroprevalence in the developed world.
Is John Heard a smug little choirboy, or what?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20849414-7583,00.html
He’s certainly captured the “makes no sense when you think about it for five seconds” style favoured by the Oz’ opinion editor.
While the major areas of risk in Australia have been kept confined to the risktakers in the homosexual/IVDA communities, that’s only as a result of the policies from the 80s that jo mentioned. As Kim says, it’s certainly not true in many other countries in the world, and not even true for most Western countries. If people stop expecting/demanding safer sex, it doesn’t take long for natural human promiscuity to pass the infection amongst the general heterosexual population.
* one third of new infections in Thailand are married women
* HIV infections in India are nearly all traced to heterosexual sex
* most African HIV infections come about through heterosexual sex
[link]
Currently, Australia’s prevention rate is excellent. It won’t be if we tell ourselves that only homosexuals/IVDAs get HIV/AIDS.
Max, the point of stopping the spread from the gay community into the IV and sex workers communities in Australia at that time, was (and still is) precisely, because we are all at risk!! What you are saying doesn’t make sense at all in epidemiological terms. (As pointed out by Kim and Tigs, Geoff H) – the virus is spread via ANY community that is infected, and knows no borders. People were infected via transfusions and shonky dentists during the early 80’s in Oz.
It’s useful to remember AGAIN that ’straight’ men in this country (I’m assuming you are of this group, Max…..) were overwhelmingly protected from infection, and the consequent spreading of the disease into the wider hetero community by legalised brothels, Govt inspections, free condoms and syringes, and the education of sex workers (male and female), all paid for, by taxpayers. It wasn’t the personal responsibility shown by all straight blokes, that the virus didnt spread.
This is the link to the data on HIV/Aids transmission rates in Oz – re: the John Heard article http://web.med.unsw.edu.au/nchecr/Downloads/oct05survrpt.pdf
and unfortunately, it does seem that the age group which is showing up with more new infections is not the under 20, or the 20-29 age group as one might expect – but the 30-39 and 40-49 age groups. Very, very disappointing.
“it does seem that the age group which is showing up with more new infections is not the under 20, or the 20-29 age group as one might expect – but the 30-39 and 40-49 age groups. Very, very disappointing.”
The median age of people living with HIV in Australia is now around 45/46 so it’s not that surprising (in one sense) that it’s largely gay men in that same age tranche who are seroconverting. Rightly or wrongly, gay men do perceive that HIV is in a very different place to where it was prior to the advent of combination therapy in the mid 90’s. While no-one wants to get infected, there’s no doubt that there’s a very different set of life options and potential now for those who do.
As disappointing as increases in infections are, it’s important to remember that gay men have lived with
HIV for nearly a quarter of a century and it’s very difficult to sustain a crisis mentality over that period in a dynamic and evolving epidemic experience. Notwithstanding, gay men – overwhelmingly – remain HIV negative. Even in inner Sydney, with a seroprevalence rate of around 15% among gay men, the overwhelming majority aren’t HIV positive. It’s worth celebrating, in my view.
Anyone got any figures on the numbers of people John Heard makes sick?
When he was confined to the blog ghetto his politically correct nonsense wasn’t so dangerous. But now that he is in the mainstream media someone has to take the blame for this outrageously long-lived, unbelievably reviving, preventable epidemic of throwback catholicism.
What a miserable situation. It must, at the very least, force a rethink of the way governments and citizens, inside and outside the gay community, approach the rising rates of bloggers crossing over to the mainstream media.
Some bloggers are no longer, and have not been for some time, purely blameless victims of this terrible affliction. It may sound harsh to say so but it is the truth. Recognising as much could save lives.
I shouldn’t have followed that link to John Heard. I always want to shove something sharp through his head when I read his diatribes against gay marriage. ‘Bug chasing’ has been going on for more than 10 years, it’s not a new phenomenon and young men have very complex reasons for doing this. I can’t give you a link because everything on this is in my notebooks. The rise of crystal meth use is another reason for the increase.
As part of a reasonable sex education program, AIDS information NOT focusing on homosexuals alone is essential. If I had teens now, there would be a box of condoms in the bathroom and they wouldn’t leave home without them.
“Bug chasing’ has been going on for more than 10 years, it’s not a new phenomenon and young men have very complex reasons for doing this.”
JahTeh, I agree with you about the complexity surrounding gay men, risk and HIV but can we bury the nonsense about “bug-chasing” that Heard has flourished in lieu of an argument?
There simply isn’t a subculture of gay men out there actively seeking to get infected. One or two lonely chatroom fantasists do not a major cultural phenomenon make. Like “snuff movies,” everyone claims “bugchasing” goes on but no-one can provide any evidence.
My information on ‘bug chasing’ is American in origin from Poz magazine, Andrew Sullivan, Micheal Signorelli and others but I should have made myself clear that I haven’t read anything about a subculture in Australia.
As for burying, I nominate John Heard.
This is an admirable ‘ribbon day’ event, which focuses on all victims of HIV infection. Even though there is a particular group in which there is a higher incidence, this does not form the cornerstone of the promotion.
Geoff, you are right, it’s very complex and I wonder what education/messages would work with these age-groups that hasn’t already? If any, maybe like smoking fags – there is a point, whereby adults make decisions about their lives, possibly ones that none of us would make.
the meth/ketamine thang apparently hit the club scene pretty hard in the past decade. only a few months ago, I was standing outside my house, saying “sorry, you cant sleep on my couch, David (old gay friend of my best girlfriend, who didnt get out of the club scene)…..”I have a young child, and I haven’t seen you in a year, and youre’ got a meth problem and who is that dodgy looking bloke in your car”.
AND THE BEST NEWS OF ALL from http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,,1961144,00.html
South Africa will use World Aids Day tomorrow to launch a plan that turns away from years of denial and obfuscation over the disease by President Thabo Mbeki and his health minister, which critics say have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The new strategy follows a shift in power that sidelined the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who was accused of promoting pseudo-scientific policies while Aids claims nearly 1,000 lives a day in South Africa.
She was removed from responsibility for HIV policy while ill in hospital, weeks after embarrassing the government at the international Aids conference in Toronto by promoting a diet of garlic and beetroot as a serious alternative to drugs in treating HIV. Leading Aids scientists called Dr Tshabalala-Msimang’s views “immoral” and demanded she be sacked.
Aids policy now falls under the control of the deputy president, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and the deputy health minister, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, who have committed themselves to the orthodox medical view of the disease.
That;s huge, jo. At last a chance for RSA to move to properly contain the infection pool.
Heard dubbya marking this date with a call to abstinence.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1802660.htm
A plea by all and sundry, to the media, to exercise abstinence when it comes to anything that issues from his mouth is just about needed.
Not to forget either, a recently elected premier who cares so little about the spread of STDS that he prefers not to allow condoms in prisons.
Par for the conservative pollie course, joe2.
Excellent post on Pandagon about World Aids Day.