AIDS Prevails in Africa
About 25 million people have been victims of AIDS. About 38 million people are infected. The pioneers of discovering the human immodeficiency virus are the Doctors Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, winners of the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2008. They shared the Prize with German researcher Harald zur Hausen, who discovered human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer.
AIDS kills about 5,700 lives every year, especially in developing countries.
Homosexual practices are illegal in the Middle East and the Maghreb region. Men who are caught having sexual relations with other men can be imprisoned or sentenced to death. Nevertheless, homosexuals in these countries still take the legal risk; however, they cease to consider a vital danger, AIDS.
In recent years, the contagion has spread among men reaching the category of an emerging epidemic. Even though homosexuality is not the number one cause of AIDS in the region, it is still responsible for 25 percent of new infections. The Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research Group at the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar recommends that urgent measures must be taken that due to this emerging fact. In countries such as Pakistan, AIDS prevalence among homosexuals reaches 28 percent.
According to a study published in Plos Medicine Magazine, it continues being a hidden epidemic; a much more numerous one every time. This study shows how homosexual sex has increased among truck drivers, male children from the streets, and prisoners. Gender segregation, delays in marriage ages, difficulty finding a wife, and overcrowding favor this type of sexual relations.
By making it illegal, aborigines in these regions turn to more risky practices. They end up having multiples and simultaneous partners and consume infected drugs. And even though most of them have heard about HIV and AIDS, they do not take in consideration the danger of contagion.
The New Jersey Congressman for the State Department and the Health and Human Services Department of the United States of America has exalted how the abstinence and fidelity campaigns in Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe have had a positive impact.
The Health Secretariat of the Aztec Government has proved the efficiency that abstinence prior to marriage and fidelity post marriage deliver. It is a progressive strategy that gets to the root of AIDS. (Translated by Gianna A. Sanchez-Moretti)
Author and journalist Clemente Ferrer has led a distinguished career in Spain in the fields of publicity and press relations. He is currently President of the European Institute of Marketing.
clementeferrer3@gmail.com
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