HIV and Sex: Africa and Prevention

This past week I learned a lot from the module that was do. Learning how HIV works and affects the immune system is important and must be understood to fully understand the disease. Also, reading articles about HIV and sex has also educated me a lot. In saying that here is my weekly report.

To continue this weeks conversation on HIV and Sex I will look back at my first blog and the article I cited for that blog. If you have not read my first blog I would encourage you to do so before you read this one, as there is a connection between the two. The issue at hand is the number of HIV infected individuals in South Africa that continue to participate in high risk behaviors such as unprotected sex. I questioned why these prevention programs in South Africa were not as affective as they should be. That the number of infected individuals is not declining, but in fact unchanged or increasing. Why are these prevention programs not working? In the article titled “HIV/AIDS: Sex, abstinence, and behavior change” the author gives a valid reason to answer this question. He states, “prevention messages make naïve assumptions about sex in African societies that fail to engage with diversity and the social and economic context of sex. Sex in the very diverse circumstance within Africa and within African countries is not necessarily the same as sex in those societies and policy communities driving prevention agendas via their funding programmes. We cannot ignore the realities of how poverty and social isolation – which are rife across sub-Saharan Africa – can influence lifestyles and place young men and women at risk. Neither can we ignore the customs and practices around sexuality that may form and frame people’s desires and practices” (Barnett and Parkhurst, 2005). Moreover, many African men and women in South Africa participate in HIV high-risk behaviors due to ritual and cultural ceremonies, not merely because they solely want to have sex. Also, women are put into certain situations in which they “deploy the important and valuable resource of their bodies as part of a livelihood strategy when the alternative may be hunger or more arduous and time-consuming ways of earning a living” (Barnett and Parkhurst, 2005). Therefore, Barnnett and Parkhurst are stating that while prevention programs are focusing on abstinence, reduction in partners, and condoms, they suggest the prevention program take a more dynamic outlook to the situation at hand. That prevention programs need to “understand and address the socioeconomic and cultural realities in which sexual behaviors are shaped. Prevention strategies must explicitly aim to provide local communities, and local leaders, freedom to shape interventions to local circumstances, and to local understandings “ (Barnnett and Parkhurst, 2005). That a prevention program cannot merely be a simply A – B – and C, but it must be tailored and molded to fit each community and its values, culture, economy, and other characteristics that make that community unique (Barnnett and Parkhurst, 2005). I wonder if this strategy might work or is working. Do you think so? I believe this idea is better then just merely an all around abstinence, reduction in partners, and condoms program. It gives the program more personality, which might be beneficial.

Sources

Barneet, T. and Parkhurst, J. (2005). HIV/AIDS: sex, abstinence, and behaviour change. Lancet Infect Dis, 5, 590-593.