HIV

Today is World AIDS Day, and I think it is timely to remind our Friends of some alarming facts about what is happening in our country. Men who have sex with men are now the leading “cases” HIV in this country.

When I came to this country 17 years ago, I was surprised that MSM sex was not the leading cause of HIV spreading in this country. I came from Los Angeles where 50 of my friends died of AIDS because they did not know what was causing AIDS (and most of them were infected even before scientists knew there was a virus and virus transmission involved).

Now we all know where HIV comes from, not from sex, but from unprotected sex.

I give only the first few scary paragraphs here. Read the whole article on Inquirer.net (Just click on the link that follows.)

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20081201-175389/Govt-warns-vs-HIV-danger-in-MSM-sector


SPECIAL REPORT: Gov’t warns vs HIV danger in MSM sector
By Diana G. Mendoza
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:31:00 12/01/2008

MANILA, Philippines — Amid the celebration of World AIDS Day on Monday, the health department is grappling with the problem of declaring an epidemic of HIV infection among a sector it calls MSM, or men having sex with men.

Increasingly, recent victims are students and young professionals.

The huge problem is that it could not declare this epidemic in the same way it does an outbreak of dengue fever because of the “gay” stigma implicit in it.

Dr. Eric Tayag, head of the health department’s National Epidemiology Center, sounded the alarm in October during the Philippine National AIDS Convention, a biannual event of the NGO AIDS Society of the Philippines.

Citing the health department’s HIV/AIDS Registry, a collection of reports from hospitals, clinics and treatment centers of laboratory-confirmed HIV tests, Tayag noted sudden, steep increases in HIV infection among MSM in the last three years.

The registry recorded 210 new infections among MSM in 2005, 309 in 2006 and 342 in 2007.

This year, from January to September alone, there were already 395 cases, up 96 percent since 2005.Tayag said there was nothing like this in the 21 years since the government kept an official record of HIV infections starting in 1984 when the first AIDS case was reported in the Philippines.

Because the cases were tremendously in excess of what was usually expected, Tayag concluded that there was “an ongoing HIV and AIDS epidemic among the MSM.”

“Several factors may be responsible but we believe MSM has become the new sexual norm (in HIV transmission),” he said.

Independent behavioral studies, he said, have shown widespread unsafe sex in this group, such as the nonuse of condoms during anal sex.