25 years later and we still haven't taken up responsibility as a species. Informing the populace, barrier contraception methods and fidelity keep bouncing on religion, customs and sheer boorishness. We shall overcome, eventually, this is a fight that goes on in many countries and many labs. But I am not optimistic for the near future. Spare a thought for the carriers of the disease. Spare a thought for the AIDS orphans. Spare a thought for the impoverished who have no access to the medications. Never spare any measure that can save your health.
I guess we have to be happy about every person that does get informed. I know that you work in a small town, where the church (still)has a lot of influence on daily life. Are you "allowed" to give out information regarding AIDS prevention?
I am doing my round of duty in a village with barely 45 people and only seven of them are under 50 I could give a lecture, all the more because we don't have a resident priest, but where would I do this? And who would attend?
You could hold a rave and decorate it with glow in the dark condoms... Although an old persons rave would probably involve lots of Barry Manilow so maybe not. Could you do something with the school?
Who can tell? Not joking. There may be such a thing as high risk groups, but I don't belive there is something like a no risk [i:98b380d02b]group[/i:98b380d02b], per se.
[quote:d655bf6ad8="Spiky"]You could hold a rave and decorate it with glow in the dark condoms... Although an old persons rave would probably involve lots of Barry Manilow so maybe not. [/quote:d655bf6ad8] No, it's a great idea! But it could get dangerous if people mistake them for those sticks that you have to snap to make them glow! :shock:
Mowgli, up at the village there are very, very few chances for high risk behaviour, although the young men can drive a couple of hours away and find prostitutes. Thing is, how can I break it to the young population? There are so very few of them, it can be very easily misinterpreted as an accusation. I think the best solution is get pamphlets and leave them at the village cafe, then everyone can have a look while pretending to be reading them because noone had brought a newspaper over and there is nothing on TV.
We do quite a bit for AIDs day...even stretching it to a week. It's quite good but after a few years it becomes repetative and is taken as a bit of a joke. It's a shame but I do think people in our school are well informed anyway. Of coarse there are always ones who never listen no matter how many warnings they get.
Part of the problem is that there is still something of a stigma associated with AIDS - we do seem to have got beyond the stage where it was known as the "gay plague" (and therefore welcomed by bigots everywhere!) but people forget the children born to infected mothers, and victims of malice - Redneck's post in the thread about the possible HIV test mentions a woman who seemed to have set out to infect as many people as she could, but that at least required the cooperation of the victims - there are reports of used needles being jabbed into innocent bystanders in crowded places, and I came across a situation recently that might be relevant. I had just finished my shopping and was going down the stairs to the Metro (Underground/subway etc) and saw a guy standing about two-thirds of the way down urinating on the handrail, which being rectangular section with a flat top meant that with surface tension the urine was running all down the top and sides to the bottom of the stairs. I don't know if it is relevant or racist to mention that he was black - it is relevant in at least one context - a white guy I would have challenged about it, but in these PC days one has to tread carefully. I could not see why anyone would want to do this, until I read Redneck's post, then I thought there might be a motive. Avgi will no doubt be able to give the answer on this - if the guy was HIV positive could his urine on the handrail - fresh and wet (it had been raining so no-one would be surprised at a wet handrail) or dry but not cleaned infect someone with an open cut on their hand, or even later if handling food?
[quote:732b4ce2c3="Pixel"] I had just finished my shopping and was going down the stairs to the Metro (Underground/subway etc) and saw a guy standing about two-thirds of the way down urinating on the handrail, which being rectangular section with a flat top meant that with surface tension the urine was running all down the top and sides to the bottom of the stairs. I don't know if it is relevant or racist to mention that he was black - it is relevant in at least one context - a white guy I would have challenged about it, but in these PC days one has to tread carefully. [/quote:732b4ce2c3] I don't think it would have been against any law of political correctness to challange a man about such actions purely based on skin colour. Are you worried about appearing racist? If you aren't racist, you should treat people of all races equally.
[quote:395262113e="Pixel"]Part of the problem is that there is still something of a stigma associated with AIDS - we do seem to have got beyond the stage where it was known as the "gay plague" (and therefore welcomed by bigots everywhere!) but people forget the children born to infected mothers, and victims of malice - Redneck's post in the thread about the possible HIV test mentions a woman who seemed to have set out to infect as many people as she could, but that at least required the cooperation of the victims - there are reports of used needles being jabbed into innocent bystanders in crowded places, and I came across a situation recently that might be relevant. (..)[/quote:395262113e] Most of those reports I stumbled upon turned out to be Urban legends. The HI Virus seems to be extremely short lived outside the human body - you can't infect yourself by kissing an infected person on the mouth, for example. You also can't inect yourself with the HIV by being stinging yourself with a needle that has been used [i:395262113e]a while [/i:395262113e]ago. I'm not talking about people sharing a needle - which bears a high risk - or getting something injected. More of the urban legend of needles deposited in the seat cushions of movie theatres and such. Other diseases maybe, but not HIV. Other body liquids than blood, semen or vaginal secretion seem not to be potent enough to make an infection likely.
we've looked a this quite a bit in school and it isn't at all likely that he was trying to pass on HIV (unless he listened to these 'urban legends' and thought he could). He may have been trying to pass on something else though, like Hsing said. The only thing HIV can be passed through with is blood contact, vaginal secretions, sharing needles and breast milk(hence the mother to child infection, it's quite unlikely to pass on the virus while the child is in the womb although it can happen, so there are drugs to prevent it. Most children are infected through the use breast milk). HIV cannot survive in air, so with blood spilling onto hands with an open wound it is possible to get the virus but unlikely. The danger there lies in things like blood transfusions (sp?) and so on, and many people have become affected as a result of this. Anyway, I may be wrong with some of this information but thats some of the points I have picked up over this week.
[quote:261300a15e="Saccharissa"] We shall overcome, eventually, this is a fight that goes on in many countries and many labs.[/quote:261300a15e] A small concession is that eventually humans will evolve a immune system responce to the HIV virus, good for the species but not for us as it will not happen anytime soon.
I wish the public were made more aware of exactly how the virus can be passed on. I felt certain it wasn't possible in Pixel's example, but I wouldn't have actually known. I think much of the fear and prejudice surrounding HIV is due to people believing they can catch it from toilet seats, kissing, etc, and therefore actually being afraid to be around anyone who has it.
You can get a multitude of things out of toilet seats but AIDS is not one of them. The virus is carried around in white blood cells and their life outside the body is 6 hours at most. Urine is, normally, sterile, but it contains substances like urea that microbes want and it gets infected very very quickly
