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REPORTS: COLOMBIA |
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Saturday 29
November
2003
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Love
Thyself, Use Condoms to Prevent HIV/AIDS
- Campaign
María Isabel García
BOGOTA,(IPS) - ”Because self-love is the
most important, I'm the one who carries
the condom,” actress Diana Angel, a
favourite among young Colombian
television viewers, says confidently and
directly into the camera.
Angel plays Gabriela, a high school
student in a low-income Bogotá
neighbourhood, in ”Francisco el
matemático” (Francisco the
mathematician). The series is broadcast
daily by RCN Televisión and has become a
national hit with its plots based on
real-life stories and its agile
camera-work.
Both the character and the actress are
in the age group, according to studies
by the capital's health secretariat, of
greatest risk of infection with the
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the
precursor to AIDS.
”We are trying to put an end to false
beliefs like 'with a condom you don't
feel the same pleasure' and that 'if a
woman carries a condom she's
promiscuous',” Angel said in a
conversation with IPS.
Just over half of the 220,000 people
with HIV/AIDS in Colombia are 15 to 35
years old. In Bogotá in particular the
highest incidence is among women 15 to
24 years old, says the capital's health
secretary, José Cardona.
These figures are among the main motives
behind the Bogotá municipal government's
launch of a campaign with the slogan
”For love or for pleasure, for your
future and mine, the condom always”.
The purpose is to foment ”healthy,
responsible and pleasurable” sexual
habits among the younger population.
Art contests centred on the condom, the
free distribution of seven million
condoms at entertainment centres and
schools, and conferences and workshops
are part of the official municipal
strategy to step up prevention of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The Bogotá campaign is reinforced by a
national effort carried out by
Profamilia, a non-governmental
organisation specialising in guidance
and services related to sexual and
reproductive health.
Actress Angel is the public face of this
NGO, which is the Colombian affiliate of
the International Planned Parenthood
Federation.
Angel says she joined forces with
Profamilia two years ago as a
spokeswoman and liaison with high
schools and youth organisations, which
has helped her realise that ”girls and
women are more idealistic about love,
and we too easily let ourselves be
persuaded to not use a condom” in sexual
relations.
While promoting the use of condoms among
adolescents who have sex, the campaign
provides answers to frequently asked
questions in an attempt to give the lie
to fallacies about these prophylactics.
”If I carry a condom am I a woman 'de
plan'?” is one such question, which
refers to the local expression for women
considered to have an active sex life.
”Yes, the 'plan' to take care of myself,
the plan to protect myself,” says Angel
in a public service announcement that is
widely broadcast by radio and TV
stations.
”It is essential to fight machismo. Men
should feel proud to be with women who
carry condoms. And if neither the man
nor the woman has one, the word 'no' is
an option and a good contraceptive
method,” she says.
The preventative and integral approach
taken by both the national and municipal
campaigns is adapted to the
recommendations made by the authorities
in the global fight against HIV/AIDS,
such as Nafis Sadik, United Nations
special envoy for the disease in Asia.
Ahead of World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, Sadik
said this week in Bogotá that women must
have the power to direct their sex lives
and their reproductive health. The
Pakistani also stressed that the state
and civil society must work together,
and maintain a focus on education, as
well as prevention and early diagnosis
of the disease.
Latin America is third in the world in
terms of the number of people in the
region with HIV, after sub-Saharan
Africa and Asia, said the U.N. official.
UNAIDS (Joint U.N. Programme on
HIV/AIDS) says there are two million
people living with HIV in Latin America,
including the estimated 200,000 people
who were infected with the virus in
2002. At least 100,000 people in the
region died of AIDS last year.
The anti-HIV/AIDS campaign in Bogotá
involves programmes of the health and
education secretariats, and of the
city's culture and tourism, and sports
and recreation institutes.
”Bogotá is an exception in the national
panorama,” says Cecilia López, director
of the Fundación Agenda Colombia, which
organised the seminar ”HIV/AIDS,
development and economic impact”, Nov.
25 and 26 in the capital.
López told IPS she believes there is a
”direct relationship” between the higher
incidence of HIV in women, which since
1998 has increased from seven to 23
percent of all cases, and the end that
year of required sex education classes
in secondary schools.
Ricardo García, UNAIDS representative in
Colombia, agrees with that
interpretation.
Undoubtedly, he said, the decline of sex
education programmes in the schools,
”which at one point were a model for the
region, is one of the factors behind the
rising curve of AIDS incidence in this
country,” he said.
A lack of adequate information, becoming
sexually active at an early age, fears
rooted in religious beliefs, and a
double standard are factors that also
contribute to higher rates of teen
pregnancies.
In this cultural context, as the
campaign got underway, Bogotá's Mayor
Antanas Mockus issued the appeal: ”Sin,
but with a condom”.
A Profamilia national survey of health
and demographics conducted in 2000 found
that 15 percent of the adolescent
Colombian girls consulted had given
birth and four percent were pregnant at
the time of the study.
The study also revealed that, despite
almost universal awareness of the
existence of HIV/AIDS (99 percent),
”many taboos and erroneous beliefs
persist.”
Eighty-four percent of the women
surveyed believed that an infected
individual cannot continue to have
sexual relations, 40 percent said that a
teacher with the disease cannot continue
teaching, and 36 percent thought that
people who are HIV positive -- even if
they have not developed AIDS -- should
be suspended from their jobs.
Despite ignorance about the disease and
how it affects people, mayor Mockus
agreed with U.N. special envoy Sadik
that ”it is possible to change
behaviours that undermine coexistence.”
He said he believes that the people of
Bogotá have made changes towards
becoming a more tolerant society.
That is one of the reasons that people
with HIV/AIDS from other parts of the
country ”seek refuge in the capital,
because they fell less marginalised and
have greater access to treatment and
medications,” said city health secretary
Cardona.
But he warned that HIV infection rates
could continue to rise, although the
prevalence in Colombia -- 0.4 to 0.8
percent -- is less than in other areas
of the Caribbean Basin, where it is more
than 1.0 percent in 12 countries.
UNAIDS reports that HIV rates surpass
two percent among pregnant women in the
Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti and
Trinidad and Tobago. It is precisely
this population in Colombian capital --
pregnant women -- who are greatest risk.
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