Significant strides have been made in prevention, however, especially in the last two years. Campaigns aimed at curbing risky sexual behavior, promoting HIV testing for those at risk and discouraging IV drug users from sharing needles all have made progress ”” albeit fitfully.
According to a United Nations report issued Thursday, the global rate of new HIV infections fell by 25% from 2001 through 2009. In India and South Africa, the countries with the largest number of people living with HIV, new infections fell by 50% and 35% respectively.
Medications will soon play a major role in prevention. Many studies over the years have shown that giving anti-AIDS drugs to pregnant HIV-positive women is extremely effective in preventing transmission to their infants. In the United States, the incidence of infection in newborns is approaching zero.
“Transmission rates among gay men, long in decline, have rebounded in recent years as the prominence of safe-sex messages wanes, complacency sets in, and gay youth who have no memory of AIDS’ once-deadly grip on their community adopt risky sexual practices. Although gay and bisexual men represent just 4% of the American population, they account for more than half of all new infections each year, according to the CDC.”
And tragically, the day a really effective treatment or cure comes along it will be defeated by the same population. The old behavior will return and overwhelm whatever advances in medical science there have been over 30 years, millions dead and untold amount of money spent. There is only one cure and that is when each HIV + person *decides not to transmit* it. It hasn’t happened yet.
My graduate work in the early 90’s was in a large, tertiary-care, inner city hospital system. It had a fantastic Infectious Disease clinic, with some very savvy, effective, informed personnel. Of course, they traveled around the country, too; educating others, doing their own Con-Ed, and sharing successful practice advice with colleagues. Even then, they were frustrated beyond words with the young gay male community, many of whom were not practicing safe sex at all, believing AIDS was something that “the old guys get”. If things haven’t changed much, I am not surprised.
This is not to say that EVERYONE, with the possible exception of married and/or monogamous individuals who have been tested already, should not practice safe sex or abstinence. To be frank, my spouse and I have been mutually faithful to each other for 23 years. But even so I was tested for HIV multiple times, before or during “gestational exercises”. I was not known to have engaged in anything risky or gotten stuck with a dirty needle or the like, but I still felt better knowing my HIV status was negative.
God’s judgment will always be God’s business and not mine, but I can’t believe that people play with fire the way they do. It’s a fool’s game…