World AIDS Day in Argentina

The FIRST of December,2005.World AIDS Day in Argentina.......

Was the world’s Aids day. With a planetarian epidemic of over 40 million people living with HIV or AIDS, of whom 5 million were newly-infected in 2005, this event takes upon a terrible problematic of these Modern days. While government and health departments, private and public organizations and the people in general must carry on a daily battle against this terrible epidemic, it has been chosen one day in which coordinated awarement efforts are made around the globe to raise consciousness on the decease, the contagious and prevention measurements.

It was recently, in the 1980s, when the decease was discovered, and since then, the only remedy to it has been prevention, for in over two decades of rough research work there has not yet been solid results in the road to eliminate the virus. While medicines and retroviral cocktails are being improved, no eradication is yet been possible… Evidence of this are the alarming statistics on the matter.

Silence and fear, discrimination and the thought of "this happens to others, not to people like me" are the epidemics best allies, the need of cultural and social education is the key to a strong first step. Prevention and information are our best weapons in this uneven battle.

Fearing to be outcasted from society, discriminated and killed in life, for many years Aids patients were a group "outside" the society’s main flow. Ignorance was the first aspect that worked together and in favor of the disease. Time went by and a world wide epidemic rose upon our silence and discrimination, we as a global society had to come forward and enmend our mistakes based on our own cultural fears based upon crooked religious precepts and social ideologies of what’s good and right in a developed society. It wasn’t, and it still isn’t about the gays, the women, the promiscuous, the bisexual, the poor… Aids does not respect social and economical boundaries. All and all, indeed there are higher risk groups exposed to the matter like the poorest groups in society with no access to education, condoms, and all other prevention methods, at the time the medicines and cocktails are way out of their economic possibilities to become a constant. What at first was the group at highest risk the gay community, it has become the most aware group in society showing a strong decrease in percentage numbers of infected.

Education and cultural awareness, money and medicines together with strengthened efforts to fight this battle are all necessary terms within the strategy against the epidemic.

In Argentina, the numbers are alarming. If we look at them together with a cultural approach we find out that wile 120,000 people in our country are HIV positive, only 29,000 of them has had contact with the official health system, and of that number, only 65% of them is receiving proper treatment.[1] In a country that’s still battling for a modern birth control system, in constant debate with religious institutions and reluctant society groups, the epidemic grows dangerously thanks to ignorance and fear. That’s why, together with a broad program for prevention, the Argentine society has to work on shock awareness. In this line of thought and action is that yesterday, Buenos Aires’ cultural and historical symbol was covered and protected by an enormous pink condom. Several other activities took place throughout the country like lectures, seminars, talks and festivals to raise awareness.

If indeed these events are important and sometimes a turning point in action, the only real remedy is found in the daily work, educating and preventing. We need to focus on the problem, this can happen to any one of us because it’s an epidemic disease, we have to fight back as a whole and society has to take upon the challenge.

[1] Information available by UN AIDS, National Program to fight back aids and local news papers.