AIDS Cases Are On The Increase In Ireland
New diagnoses of HIV are rising. Campaigners say HIV/AIDS needs to be put back on the public and political agenda – but is there a way to do so without stigmatising those living with the disease?
Valerie Flynn, 03 Nov 2010
There’s the dull sound of distant, thumping techno, as if there’s a party going on elsewhere in the house. A man and woman stumble into the dark room, strip their clothes off and start having sex; first she’s on top, then he is. The camera focuses on their bodies, but then the man raises his face. And it’s Hitler.
This was the shock-tactic safe sex campaign by German charity Rainbow that caused outrage across Europe last year. The message – “AIDS is a mass murderer; protect yourself!” – was condemned by other HIV/AIDS organisations as demonising people with the disease, rather than demonising the disease itself.
But Rainbow vociferously defended their ad, which was covered by media outlets the world over and clocked up millions of hits on YouTube. A spokesman said, “We want to give this terrible virus a face. This shock campaign is necessary to get people thinking again.”
Because it’s becoming increasingly clear that, when it comes to HIV and safe sex, there is a generation who aren’t thinking.
Research by Belgian scientists into the rise in new HIV infections, published last month, showed that transmission of the disease was “significantly associated with Caucasian origin, infection through homosexual contact and younger age” – that’s young, white, gay men in other words.
In Ireland in 2009, the number of new infections among men who have sex with men climbed by over 40% from the previous year. In total, 138 new cases were diagnosed in this group. The experts at the HSE’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre, who compile the national statistics on HIV, described the growing number of men who contracted the virus through sex with other men as “the key finding from this year’s report.”
“The majority (63%) of these men were born in Ireland and most likely acquired their infection in Ireland. Young men under the age of 30 years accounted for 35% of new diagnoses,” the report’s authors stated.
Needless to say, HIV is in no way confined to gay or bisexual men. Of the 395 new cases recorded last year, 39% (96 women and 60 men) contracted HIV through heterosexual sex; this was the single biggest group of new diagnoses. Only 9% of new HIV cases were injecting drug users.
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