Homophobia behind gay HIV underspend
The global battle against HIV was missing the epidemics among gay men and men who have sex with men (MSM) due to homophobia, the AIDS 2008 conference in Mexico City this week has heard.
UNAIDS executive director Dr Peter Piot made the comments and also highlighted the particular problems homophobia was causing in the global south countries in Asia, Africa and South America.
We, the UN system, need to move to comprehensive, -˜business-like’ programs to combat homophobia directly throughout the global south, Piot told a meeting on MSM and HIV co-chaired by AFAO executive director Don Baxter.
We’re seeing rates of HIV infection among gay men in global south countries not seen since the -˜invisible’ epidemics in the early 1980s in Australia, North America and Western Europe.
He blamed the homophobia of political leaders in the developing countries for blocking data gathering as well as prevention programs for MSM.
Baxter, meanwhile, called on Australia to dramatically upgrade its reponse to the MSM infection rates, calling them shocking.
Australia’s contribution to HIV funding and expertise in the Asia Pacific region over the last decade has been considerable but only a miniscule portion of this has been allocated to gay/MSM programs, Baxter said.
The World Bank’s Dr David Wilson described the underspending on MSM programs as the missing pillar in the global AIDS response.
A low budget item would be for public health pressure on Google and Yahoo to stop the sponsored ads in search results for “poppers”. MSN responded to community feedback and ceased the sponsored ads.
Google, Yahoo, and MSN all feature search results for “poppers” listing drug selling sites. They violate their own policies by listing illegal drug selling sites. Sale and distribution of poppers is banned in the United States and several countries.
The poppers industry promotes poppers as hazardless and public health HIV prevention efforts should educate gay men and men who have sex with men about the hazards of using poppers.
At the recent International AIDS Conference in Mexico, 2008, a Thailand study using multivariate analysis found poppers use in the last 4 months an independent risk factor for HIV positivity among self identified gays and bisexuals.
Published research accumulates finding that poppers use increases the likelihood of unprotected sex as well as HIV transmission. Time for the community based organizations to eeducate gays about the research.
Oh! Here we go!