HIV spread alarming

HIV spread alarming

Two hundred gay and bisexual men are being infected with HIV every day in the Asia Pacific region, a figure which should be ringing alarm bells with the Australian government, AFAO’s executive director Don Baxter has warned.

Speaking from the Asia Pacific AIDS conference currently being held in Bali, Baxter called on AusAID to increase its funding for services to gay men and men who have sex with men in the region.

The situation is getting worse and there are no large-scale interventions in the gay communities and among MSM in the region outside Thailand, he explained.

In the last financial year AusAID expended less than $1 million in the region on MSM and over the last five years in harm reduction they’ve spent over $60 million, so the proportions are just out of kilter given that MSM is as high a priority and arguably a higher priority now.

We’re not calling for them to reduce expenditure on harm reduction but to increase funds available to MSM.

The population generating the most infections at the moment is among people using drugs but based on some very authoritative modelling done by the Commission on AIDS in Asia, if current programs are continued for the next ten years, by 2020, nearly 50 percent of infections in the region will arise from sex between men. So the rate of infection among MSM is higher than any other population and will soon become the biggest.

Baxter would like to see significant funding allocations for MSM programs introduced this financial year.

It’s taking AusAID a long time to adjust its funding programs to allocate more money and the real problem is that the window of opportunity to really effectively intervene in these major cities in Asia before the epidemics get right out of control, that window of opportunity is closing rapidly. If it takes us two years before we invest any more money for MSM programs, then we will have largely lost the battle.

According to AFAO, every year Australia delays will lead to 73,000 new infections in the region.

This is about the human rights of these people not to be destroyed by HIV, and that underpins a lot of Australia’s aid program, but in this case as well, if Australia doesn’t act to reduce the impact of HIV in the region, then the treatment of costs for the numbers infected is going to be that much greater and Australia can not and does not resile from assisting the health of the people in the region.

We do, as a rich country have the responsibility to do that.

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8 responses to “HIV spread alarming”

  1. Sadly today, there are huge numbers of gay men, who are hostile to their hiv positive fellows. In my experience over twelve years as hiv positive, discrimination and hostility has almost entirely emanated from gay men rather than straight! Of course, law of averages determines that some of these eventually become hiv and even impoverished due to reduced living circumstances, too; the psych reaction just be mind-boggling for the poor darlings!!!

  2. Oliver, the only reason you can “take care of yourself” is because you were raised in a country that did it’s damndest to make sure that every young person was educated about HIV/AIDS. How can you judge people who know nothing about HIV nor about how to prevent it?

  3. Amazing how the HIV people here get so defensive. Society doesnt owe you a living.

    Editor’s note:
    Oliver, I would warn you against making assumptions about other posters under this story.

  4. Oliver, I am not even going to be as polite as Esther. Start using your fucking brain instead of running off at the mouth about things you clearly do not understand.
    I mean honestly, I have never in my life cme across such a selfish attitude.
    Either you are one seriously fucked up north shore princess, or you sit here purposely being a bitch to incite attention-seeking comments.
    Either way, I’m pretty certain you are in need of a shrink …

  5. Oliver, what an arrogant, stupid and down right heartless comment.
    No one is asking you to be a “surrogate parent” to “these people”. What is being asked is that the Australian government – who have signed a number of agreements to provide foreign aid money – direct that money in an effective way.
    The HIV/AIDS crisis is a worldwide problem and must have a worldwide solution. It is simply a deplorable attitude to think that because someone lives in the developing world, that they deserve to die.
    Go learn a little bit about the history of developing nations and economics before you make such blatantly ignorant comments, and you might learn a little bit about how your privilege is based on someone else’s loss.
    Besides which – and this is a point that someone as grossly self interested as yourself might understand – there are strong arguments for Australia to assist the pacific HIV crisis for our own sake. It leads to less infections in Australia and will ultimately reduce the total amount of aid money needed in the area.
    A country with a healthy population is more self sufficient, can spend less money on health care and more on other essential services needed, like schools, roads and government development strategies. All of which lead to a stronger nation that can build its own way out of poverty rather than having to depend on foreign assistance. Which, for selfish people like yourself who only care about getting more, more and more for the developed world, will leave more money in our government’s coffers.

  6. Its up to the individual to Care about their own bodies. Im not a Surrogate parent to these people.