| May. 21st, 2009 @ 11:00 pm complacency and accountability |
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Current Mood:  optimistic
I am feeling very inspired.
It's not that I didn't know that HIV/AIDS was a big deal, because I did.
But it's definitely enlightening (to a shocking extent) to become aware of the scope and breadth of this problem (and the global STI problem, in general), at many fundamental levels and to become aware of the efforts it takes to implement change.
One very interesting example of the struggle to implement change was highlighted in a documentary entitled "Snipped" that I watched this evening. In the 80's, a team from the UM traveled to Africa to help with the battle against chancroid. They won. But they also noticed a new disease emerging, which turned out to be HIV/AIDS. In this preliminary years of investigation, it was noted and published by members of the team, that there was a lower occurance of HIV/AIDS in circumsized men. How? Well, I'm not going to get into the immunology of it, but trust me, it makes SENSE. However, circumcision wasn't accepted as a prevention method until 2007. How did this come about? Three studies, in different countries, were concurrently done to evaluate the HIV acquisition in circumsized and uncircumsized men. The studies were halted early, when the results showed that male circumcision can reduce HIV acquisition by up to 60%, and it was deemed unethical to continue the study without offering circumcisions to the uncircumsized group. Even though it took like 20 years for this to be done (which sucks, seriously), it only took about 18 months to implement, and currently there are massive programs and a lot of funding going towards providing sanitary and professional circumcisions to African men. They are still facing a lot of cultural and political resistance though.
It's tricky. It's not as easy as handing out condoms and clean syringes and educating. Because they are doing that, and incidences are RISING. There isn't a silver bullet, and despite the effort of the scientific community to find a cure for this disease, one does not exist. What I find troubling, is that while incidence rises, so does complacency. The American speaker commented on a national survey, where a very small proportion of Americans thought that HIV was still an issue. That, I find terrifying.
However, it is truly inspiring to sit in on an international meeting of minds, in the face of their own (current) failure, and hear them be accountable for this failure yet still optimistic. Many of them have devoted the last 25 (or so) years of their life to solving the problem, and they remain unwaveringly enthusiastic, with ongoing promising projects.
I feel very fortunate to have a small place it in all, and every day I feel more confident that I belong there. |
