AIDS and the Responsibility of the Media

D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 5, September/October 1999, p. 3)

Editorial

AIDS and the Responsibility of the Media

Dieter Brauer

HIV/AIDS is one of the most terrible diseases the world has ever known. Estimates are that 37 million people worldwide are already infected with the deadly virus which weakens the human immunity system and leaves the body unprotected for the onslaught of a host of other diseases. So far, there is no vaccine to shield people against HIV, and there is no effective cure for the disease. This means that people inevitably die once they have caught the virus although some ten years or more may pass before the actual outbreak of AIDS in its final stages. UN figures say that 23 million of HIV/AIDS infected people live in Sub-saharan Africa alone - and all of them are doomed to die a painful death. At least 4 million newly infected were added to that number in 1998. As a result of the epidemic, life expectancy on the continent, which had been climbing persistently during the first three decades of post-independence development, will drop by ten years and more in many countries, especially in Southern Africa. And it will be the young, economically active people - who are also the sexually most active ones - that will be prominent among the victims. AIDS thus is not only a humanitarian disaster, it is also threatening to become another source of economic retardation and backwardness.

Why then is there still so little attention paid to the looming crisis? Why are African leaders not getting together to discuss what needs to be done to control the situation? Why are they not using every means at their disposal to hammer the message home to their people: AIDS is a deadly disease, but AIDS can be reigned in through more responsible behaviour and a change in sexual practices?

In Europe and America, when AIDS surfaced as a common threat in the late 1980s, every effort was made to alarm the public and especially the most vulnerable groups - homosexuals, sex workers, people with frequently changing sex partners - about the dangers of unprotected sex. It was especially through the media that almost everybody became aware of the AIDS menace. Prominent individuals - film stars, pop musicians, artists - who had been infected with AIDS outed themselves in the media and used their fame in anti-AIDS campaigns. Existing taboos on sexual practices were deliberately broken, and safer sex became a publicly debated issue. Much emphasis was placed on using condoms as a cheap and simple, but usually effective means to avoid infection. As a result of the public awareness campaigns and the continuous media coverage, new HIV infections in industrial countries returned to a relatively low level, and the disease today is considered to be under control, even though no medical cure has yet been found to treat AIDS patients.

While these successes were achieved in developed countries, the disease has been spreading with increasing speed in Africa and, lately, in Asia. Here, the society has reacted with far less openness to the challenges posed by AIDS. For a long time, political leaders and the media negated the menace in the erroneous belief that AIDS was mainly a disease of the decadent West. When they woke up to the fact that AIDS was a problem not only for homosexuals in Los Angeles, London, or Berlin but also for "normal" hetero-sexual men and women in Uganda, South Africa or India, sexual taboos and religious inhibitions as well as social customs and attitutes proved powerful obstacles to launching publicity campaigns on the model of the Western countries. As a result, there is still far too little information in developing countries on AIDS as a disease and what people can do to protect themselves against it. A recent study published by Johns Hopkins University in the United States, for instance, shows that only between 5 and 33 per cent of unmarried men are using condoms in sexual intercourse to avoid infection with AIDS. With women, condoms are even less known or popular than with men. The study says that the number of couples using condoms regularly is still very low worldwide. Instead of the 6 to 9 billion condoms used at present, 24 billion are required to control new infections. This is a question of money, because many of the people who ought to use condoms are among the poorest groups in the population, but it is also a question of breaking down barriers created out of prejudice and ingrained sexual behaviour.

Here, the media have a vital role to play. It is not enough to put up a few posters in town which warn against AIDS. The message has to be direct and concrete - Mechai in Thailand has shown how a witty and effective pro-condom campaign can be conducted even in a country with a strong Buddhist tradition - and it should not shy away from breaking sexual taboos. Equally important: all media should be used - newspapers, radio, TV, films, video - to carry the message. AIDS awareness should always be part of reproductive health information, and indeed, both are part of the same coin: if more condoms are used to prevent unwanted pregnancies, a welcome side-effect will be a reduction in new HIV infections.

AIDS and the menace it poses to the survival of large parts of African and Asian populations is not a pleasant subject. But it will not go away by keeping silent about its threat. Political leaders and the media must make it a topic for urgent action. And the people must change their sexual habits and behaviour and opt for safer sex. Otherwise, the future of whole regions on this globe will be grim.

D+C Development and Cooperation,
published by: Deutsche Stiftung für internationale Entwicklung (DSE)
Editorial office, postal address:
D+C Development and Cooperation, P.O. Box 100 801, D-60008 Frankfurt, Germany.
E-Mail: 106145.1065@compuserve.com

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