AIDS 2008, the annual international AIDS conference (held this year in Mexico City, for the first time) wrapped up last week. U.S. press coverage of the conference has focused largely on the Centers for Disease Control announcement on the day before the conference started that more people in the U.S. are HIV positive than previously believed. Much of that press coverage has been critical of the CDC for its prevention outreach programs. Advocate.com this week is running an interesting AP story on the conference that elaborates one of the most obvious, yet underreported, problems: only a tiny fraction of the prevention and education money for HIV/AIDS outreach globally is focused on the gay community.
While HIV/AIDS cases worldwide affect large numbers of both straight and gay people, nearly all of the prevention funding goes to programs focused on heterosexuals. In fact, the AP story reported that “less than 1 percent of the $669 million reported in global prevention spending targets men who have sex with men.”
The CDC’s latest figures also show that HIV infection rates are rising among gay and bisexual men in the U.S. That’s true in other countries as well. In many countries (including our own), social norms or political interference in health education prevent direct outreach to these audiences. This kind of outreach discrimination is making it harder to get safe sex messages and resources to many of the very people who need them most – and is likely helping foster the increase in infection rates in several countries. As Craig McClure, executive director of the International AIDS Society told the AP: “It’s very difficult to provide services to men who have sex with men in countries that don’t acknowledge they exist or criminalize them if they do exist.” The article goes on to provide damning information about the dramatic rise in HIV infection among gay and bisexual men in numerous countries across the globe.
This is a communications problem with an obvious solution: target the information to the people who need it. And that means gay and bisexual men in addition to straight men and women. The challenge is two-fold: figuring out how to do that in countries where societal pressures make that difficult; and finding the political will to make it happen.
It’s not enough to say “we’re fighting HIV/AIDS” if we’re not talking to all of the audiences affected by it. It’s not enough to say “we’re doing all we can” if we’re not even acknowledging the existence of some members of the audience.
And that brings us home, to the U.S. Just days before the CDC announcement, the Black AIDS Institute made headlines with the release of their report that concluded that “AIDS in America today is a black disease” (as Institute chief Phil Wilson told CNN). Citing 2006 CDC statistics, Wilson said that 50% of the nearly 1 million Americans living with HIV are black. As Wilson (who is gay and HIV positive) pointed out, funding for HIV/AIDS education and outreach in this country is not keeping pace with the threat and Black Americans are often left out of the outreach equation. Again, the communities that need prevention education aren’t getting it.
We’ve written here before about “prevention fatigue” and the dangers of complacency about HIV/AIDS in our community (and others). But that’s only part of the problem. If the powers that be aren’t providing the leadership to even talk to us, the problem will continue to get worse. The answer is at once both simple and exceedingly difficult: drop the politics and focus the message on where the need is. If you don’t talk to us, how will you reach us?
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