Taboos can Kill

The negative associations of HIV/AIDS - like those of cancer in the 1950s - have led to catastrophe.

That's why high-profile businesses and community leaders, along with respected organizations such as Rotary, can make a difference. Get talking, get involved, get the facts, and get doing to spread awareness and education.

It can be difficult to talk about

Homosexuality - HIV/AIDS often incorrectly labeled a "gay man's disease"
Injection drug users
Anything spread by sexual contact
A global catastrophe too enormous to contemplate
High-risk behaviour

More misery in Africa
Our lifestyle supported by ongoing colonization and plundering of impoverished countries
Slow, painful, messy death
AIDS is fatal - there is no cure
Nice people don't get AIDS

In the silence, nice people - good people - continue to acquire HIV through:

Blood transfusions
High-risk behaviour
Monogamous spouses (often mothers with children) infected by wandering partners
Rape
Infants infected at birth

Breast feeding (from an HIV-infected mother to her infant)
Occupational exposure in health care settings
AIDS affects people of all ages, all genders, all races, all walks of life, all countries, all religious faiths

AIDS can be an insiduous attack on women and mothers

52% of new infections world-wide are in women – it’s just over half according to 2009 report (doesn’t include teenage girls)
A high percentage of women in many countries of Africa report that their initiation to sex is by rape.

In many countries, women have no right to say "no" - to their infected husbands or any man who wants them
Abstinence is not an option - faithful wives and mothers are succumbing to AIDS while their children are still young - philandering is inherent amongst males in many societies. Sadly, this may take generations to change. We can't wait.

Consequences

Almost 5,000 people per day are dying of AIDS
A generation is being wiped out in many countries in Africa - and soon, if nothing is done, in other continents
Orphaned children – 14.8 million in Sub-Saharan Africa alone - many HIV positive
Teachers, civil servants, lawyers, doctors, doctors, health care workers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, people from all walks of life are dying of AIDS. People that form the body of civil society, that keep it functioning, are disappearing
A generation of orphans coming of age in desperate circumstances will become self-raised adults - leading to instability in the region, political consequences and threats to developed countries.

Young girls, raising their young siblings desperate to feed them, are turning to prostitution out of desperation, inevitably becoming infected themselves
- "Yes, I know I may get AIDS, but it will take 5 years to kill me. If I can't feed my young brothers and sisters, they will die in weeks…" - African girl, 12 years old
Ostracism
- Local: loss of jobs and income, shunning, schoolyard bullying
- Overseas: women thrown onto the street if HIV positive, usually no treatment available anyway

Promoting sexual abstinence alone as a prevention strategy has failed dramatically - with tragic consequences

Yet people continue to be blamed for their sexuality, and backs are turned. Result: behind our backs, the AIDS pandemic continues to grow at the alarming rate of 2.6 million new infections each year.

The Global War on AIDS >

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