11:00 AM |
More HIV/AIDS education needed in Pacific
http://www.radioaustralianews.net.au/story.htm?id=24692
Kate McPherson
Last Updated:
World AIDS Day is being recognised by many countries around the world.
The deadly Human Immunodeficiency Virus can cause Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS, which takes the lives of millions of people each year as their immune systems fail.
The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 2.7 million people contract HIV each year.
Pacific view
Jovesa Saladoka is the Prevention Officer with the HIV and STI Section of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.
He says health workers in the Pacific Islands are now days much more open to treating people with HIV but a lot more needs to be done in the wider community to demystify the disease.
"HIV does not only affect the person who is living with it like a mother or a father, it touches each and every sector of the community and ultimately it affects the development plans of a country for example", he said.
"So we therefore must try and personalise the issue and actually drive towards ensuring that our family members for example know about HIV, that they know about how to protect themselves."
Mr Saladoka says there is still a stigma in the Pacific region around HIV/AIDS that needs to be addressed.
"HIV is still seen in a number of countries as the disease from outside that's only restricted to gay men or sex workers or people who have lots and lots of sex so there's a lot of stigma and discrimination around that."
Mr Saladoka says culture and religious beliefs are still holding back the spread of important information.
"We keep hearing this whole notion about culture and religion as barriers to HIV prevention because there is no public discourse because it�s disrespectful to the culture, or because it's against my religious beliefs. So that is I think something that we still need to focus on - is to really try and address how we can include such aspects of culture and religion to help reduce the risks and vulnerabilities of Pacific islanders."
Link between drugs and transmission of HIV
Professor Robert Power, the Principal for Disease Prevention at the Burnet Institute in Australia, has studied the link between the use of drugs and the transmission of HIV.
"The focus in Asia is very much around injecting drug use and if we look at the Pacific, there are quite different patterns. What we found instead was the use of alcohol, commercial alcohol, home brew, quite high potency home brew, and cannabis. So we're not looking at transmission routes through injecting, we're looking at the consequences and links between alcohol, home brew, cannabis use and unsafe sex," he said.
Mr Power says sex is the main way HIV is spread in the Pacific region, "whether that's heterosexual sex or men having sex with men,� he said.
Education
Professor Robert Power says there is a low level of understanding in some Pacific countries of how HIV is spread.
"We need to develop broad-based education campaigns, we need to be working with the education sector and the schools to have AIDS-specific targeted messages for young people," he said.
He says alcohol and drug use should be addressed in connection with the spread of HIV.
"One thing that came up very clearly in our research was this notion of a culture of intoxication that people actually drink absolutely to excess and that's when, as we know people lose their inhibitions and they're less likely, even with the best of intentions to use condoms," he said.
"The other part of that of course is making sure that good quality condoms are provided and available and freely available."
Mr Power says HIV/AIDS in the Pacific region is relatively low and can stay this way with education and prevention measures.
"In Papua New Guinea, what we're seeing is high prevalence of instances of HIV through heterosexual sex predominantly, and that in a way could be, and I'm not suggesting it should be, but could be a lesson and a precursor for countries where the similar source of patterns of alcohol and drug use occur."
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pacific islands media association
pima.nius@gmail.com
aotearoa, new zealand
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