Essential to keep up the fight against Aids

As the Aids 2012 declaration noted: “Through new scientific advances and societal, political and human rights gains, it is possible to turn the tide against the Aids and begin to end the epidemic in our lifetimes.”

This is a statement of hope that comes tinged with wishfulness. The conference was certainly right in highlighting the scientific advances that promise to create a watershed in the treatment and prevention of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

More than eight million people are being treated and, although there is no cure yet for HIV, the pursuit is still on. However, it is ironic that even as medical advances make the war incrementally easier to fight, complacency appears to have set in socially, although more than 33 million people have HIV.

Aids is no longer seen as a potential threat to Western civilisation in the same way as the plague was viewed in 14th-century Europe or cholera to an extent in the 19th century. Regrettably, Aids is seen largely as a Third World epidemic. Two-thirds of those with HIV/Aids live in Africa, although it is home to only a tenth of the world’s population. As a poor man’s and woman’s epidemic, Aids/HIV has to fight for international attention and interest with a host of issues that matter more to the developed world. The Aids 2012 conference and like-minded efforts are commendable efforts to prevent the epidemic from being pushed off international radar screens.

A particular benefit they bring is that they highlight the relative success of Western societies in confronting ignorance, racism, bigotry and homophobia, which are impediments to the struggle against Aids everywhere. Public mindsets are an essential part of the war on the disease.

Singapore has come a long way since 1998, when Paddy Chew became the first Aids victim to declare his condition publicly and helped to break the silence and address prejudices surrounding the taboo that had obscured the reality of the Aids problem here. The fact is that 90 per cent of HIV infections occur through sexual intercourse and of these, 60 per cent are the result of heterosexual intercourse. Plainly, it is not who a person is but his behaviour that puts him at risk of infection. This needs to be underscored so the guard is not lowered. The promotion of safer sex through the use of condoms and circumcision in heterosexual men, as some advocate, remains as relevant as ever.

Notwithstanding the march of science, it is still social behaviour that will make the difference in the war against a 30-year-old scourge that has claimed 30 million lives already.