NOTEBOOK by KEVIN PALMBA

AIDS, a ‘poor man’s disease’

THE expensive “safe sex” media campaign against HIV/AIDS over the last 10 years is a failure.

The money, mostly from foreign donors, was a waste.

That can be the conclusion when considering the alarming increase in new HIV/AIDS infections as constantly reported by the National AIDS Council and health authorities.

As each day, week, month and year passes, new numbers are being added to the list of HIV/AIDS infected people. Authorities are claiming there could more than 80,000 people living with the virus. Still others are saying this could be an under estimation.

If one was to go by these suggestions, why is HIV/AIDS spreading exponentially despite the very expensive and often-blunt media campaign against it over a decade?

While the expensive campaign is dominating the media, coffins of AIDS victims are returning to the villages.

Others are ending up at Nine Mile outside Port Moresby and other public cemeteries in cities and towns around the country.

Some of the bodies of AIDS victims are being kept in morgues for weeks and months on end with no relative to claim and bury them. In some of the major hospitals like Port Moresby General and Mount Hagen General, bodies of AIDS victims are taking up most of the spaces in morgues.

Relatives are refusing to collect the bodies to accord them burial rites. These were those who were once dear to them when they were alive and healthy.

There are various messages in this situation: The expensive safe sex and anti-AIDS media campaign is not working; people do not know about the disease and are living in fear; or some of them just hate their dead relatives for engaging in risky behaviour despite the best of advice, resulting in them ending up contracting HIV and dying from AIDS.

It is now said and known in international government and multilateral circles that HIV/AIDS is a “poor man’s disease”.
They are saying that poverty-stricken people are engaging in risky behaviour such as prostitution to make ends meet and contracting HIV/AIDS as a result.

They say poor people do not have the money to educate themselves about HIV/AIDS and better living, and are prone to the deadly disease.

In other words, poor people do not have the ability to buy education to enlighten them on the disease and modern ways of life in general.

Poor people are mostly from poor countries in the so-called Third World.
Poor people in poor countries are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS when they imitate certain lifestyles and cultures alien to their own.

They are prone to imitating what is presented by the mass media, which in reality is expensive to access and sustain.

Take for instance the consumption of alcohol and night-clubbing - they are aspects of an introduced culture or lifestyle that can be accessed and sustained at manageable level by those with money.

Yet in PNG, thousands of comparatively poor people are imitating these introduced ways. The PNG style of drinking is abusive. When poor people want to take it further and imitate drinking, they are brewing “home brew” or “steam”. The impact of this is widely talked about and reported.

Furthermore, when the poor want to imitate the concept of “night-clubbing”, they end up hosting backyard discos in squatter settlements, neighbourhoods and villages. Often these imitations of the night-club concept stay open from dawn to dusk and are dubbed “six-to-six” dances. Again the impact of the imitated night-club is detrimental. Here in the imitated night-clubs, the imitation alcohol labelled “home brew” or “steam” is dominantly consumed.

The introduced drug of marijuana also features prominently along with homebrew in these gatherings.

In these occasions, which are a common place where thousands of poor young people gather in poor communities around the country, there is little control and order.

There are no club-rules as one would find in the original night club. The poor people, mostly young, have little control over each other’s behaviour. HIV/AIDS in never far from these imitating night-clubs patronised by the poor.

The expensive media promotion of condom against HIV/AIDS is set to fail if the poverty surrounding the imitation culture is not addressed.

Last week, this column highlighted the work of the PNG pimps that is contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The pimps are facilitating for generally poor women and girls to be involved in a culture of imitation, when they have no money but enter a night-club and have a night-out at the expense of some better-off men.

The pimps are comparatively poor themselves too. They just arrange a girl or woman for a man for a K50 note or some all-expense paid for trip to a night-club, courtesy of the well-off male that is paying for the pimp and the female he has arranged.

When HIV/AIDS is spreading despite some of the most expensive safe sex and condom use campaigns over nearly 10 years, surely something is wrong in the approach.

If HIV/AIDS is a “poor man’s disease”, the answer against the pandemic lies in eradicating poverty — giving equitable opportunities for education and other social services to all the people. Perhaps that now means also addressing the reasons why this country and majority of its people in modern world standards are poor.