RP sitting on HIV/AIDS iceberg
Don't you think it's about time we stop ignoring the issue and pretending that we are isolated or even immune from the global HIV/AIDS epidemic? While other countries have started or are already taking vigorous measures to slow down its advance, the vast majority of Filipinos still believe the old paradigms that only homosexuals, intravenous drug users, prostitutes, promiscuous people or foreigners are at risk. We are ALL at risk. And there still NO cure. And its about time the government does something before its too late.
Health chief: RP sitting on HIV/AIDS iceberg
THE PHILIPPINES is sitting on the tip of an HIV/AIDS iceberg and worried health authorities have no idea how big the problem facing the country is, a top official told an international conference here Tuesday.
Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit said that the Philippines has 2,200 confirmed cases of HIV and 676 cases of AIDS according to latest figures, but officials feared that the true level of infection could be far higher.
"We in the Philippines are sitting on the tip of an iceberg and we don't know how big the base is," Dayrit told the conference organized by various bodies including the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS.
Dayrit said that up to one million prostitutes and an estimated one to two million of their clients were vulnerable to HIV/AIDS but emphasized that the problem was no longer limited to the sex trade.
"It cuts across all boundaries... rich and poor," Dayrit said, saying that the fight against the disease in this Roman Catholic nation needed to be brought out into public domain.
"What we need in the Philippines is a public face to the HIV/AIDS fight. Something which will galvanize the nation. What ever the government says will have little impact."
He said one of the biggest challenges was increasing sex education in schools.
"HIV/AIDS needs to be brought out into the open," he said.
"Young people need to be told that they are not invincible and we have to start telling people that they should start taking responsibility for their own sexual behavior."
Dayrit said those most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS include between 500,000 to one million prostitutes; 15.7 million young people between 15 and 24 years of age; an estimated one to two million clients of sex workers and an estimated 7.6 million overseas Filipino workers.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS has doubled in recent years and has spread beyond sex workers, Dayrit said.
"Although our numbers for HIV/AIDS is small when compared with other countries in the region there is no room for complacency. My concerns are with the hidden challenges," he said.
Of the cases so far reported in the Philippines, 69 percent were in the 20 to 39 year-old-age group and 63 percent were males, according to government data.
The data shows that sexual intercourse remained the leading mode of HIV transmission at 92 percent, with returning overseas Filipino workers accounting for 33 percent of the reported HIV cases.
The WHO and the Department of Health have estimated that at the end of 2003 there were 10,000 Filipinos infected with HIV.
At the end of 2004 the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS estimates that in Asia and the Pacific there were 8.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
By Agence France-Presse
Comments
All you can do is spread the word to your communities and lobby the WHO and other aids organizations to visit your country and give your people a voice to the world.
Drugs are not cheap, look at the rife abuse of the face of aids in Africa. where young girls are forced to have sex w/men w/o help. and the disease is perpetuated.
This disease will kill major populations because of economic greed of those who control the drugs. the lack of support and education world wide, and the fact that AIDS is still a taboo subject over dinner and dessert.
I know what you are saying. I just never knew it was so bad in your area. Write to the CDC and WHO and the European union and ask that they shed light on the plight of the people there. That is the only way that change will come.
It falls also on the shoulders of YOUR leaders to raise these issues to the international community. and how many have done that. When Asia and the east have kept this disease in the dark for so many years, and why is your community NOT educating your youth? If they are, they need to try harder.
We as PWA's can only tell you what we know of the world view of aids, and the news we have is not good.
It has been said that this disease will decrease the surplus population and thats what it looks like when you see apathetic world leaders turn a blind eye to aids, in opt for weapons of mass distruction, nuclear warheads and such. the proliferation of weapons and the overthrowing of Axis of Evil leaders is more pressing than the saving of milions of lives.
THAT truth is so evident. IF the world was more attune to Life rather than death all over the world, more people would be living instead of dying.
Alas, what can we do??? the thousands of voices for aids research and the freeing up of drugs for world consumption go unheard.
what can we do but hope that one day this will all change, and i fear that will not happen in time to save the millions who need help and assistance.
The fact that AIDS is so rampantly growing exponentially speaks volunes for how people still act irresponsibly and without remorse.
People need to be held accountable if THEY are transmitting disease. The sex industry in asia has serious problems as it does all over the world. safe sex guidelines are never followed by many.
it is all about survival and the almighty dollar in whatever currency you change it. sad, the world steps aside and lets disease run rampant all over the world, if THEY spent 1/2 the defense monies spent yearly in each country we could stop infectious disease or at least curb the spread and give medications to those who would want it.
But how many aids infected people around the world care? and how many people will be infectd by aids in the time it took me to type this repsonse all over thew world.
The world needs to rise to the needs of her people or the earth will be laid wasted with corpses eventually.
thats my rant on aids.
jeremy
It's Wrong!
eppur si muove.
As for us, employees of THIS office, do we even have an AIDS benefit package? Or a package for HIV infection? I don't even know myself.