Low condom use among vulnerable sectors of the population reveals just the tip of the country’s problem with the spike in new cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), assert health workers and advocates for the rights of people living with HIV (PLHIV) or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (Aids).
The HIV/Aids Registry of the Philippines recorded 1,962 new HIV cases from July 2017 to August 2017 for an average of 31 cases a day.
This has prompted the Department of Health’s (DOH) Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) to declare the HIV/Aids epidemic as a “national emergency” last August.
The government has stepped up efforts to conduct community-based HIV screening, testing, and counseling for HIV awareness, as well as offering free antiretroviral treatment for HIV-positive persons.
Yet, critics blame the HIV/Aids national emergency on the government’s failure to decisively deal with the “epidemic’s shifting epicenter” from sex workers in the 1990s to the men having sex with men (MSM) and youths, the sectors that have a tenfold increase of HIV prevalence over the last five years.
According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the country’s HIV/Aids prevention program should prioritize the MSM and youths, who have “little or no access” to services and resources fitting their needs.
A national education program on effective HIV prevention should promote awareness of the condom’s usefulness in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) without the stigma or discrimination surrounding high-risk sexual behavior.
HIV/Aids is described as a “behavior-centered disease”. Educating the community about the risks of certain sex practices, like unprotected sex, should significantly prevent the spread of HIV/Aids.
Yet, moralizing turns the prevention issue into a minefield, with the government too cowed to take on the Roman Catholic Church, conservative sectors, and other guardians of morality who lobby against and disrupt initiatives, such as the plan of the DOH and the Department of Education to distribute condoms as part of age-appropriate sex education modules in schools.
DOH data show that from 2010 to 2016, HIV infection rate in the country increased by 140 percent. Two out of three new HIV cases involved MSM aged 15 to 24 years.
To prevent schools from becoming “high burden areas,” with high incidence of new infections, education officials should initiate the incorporation into the curriculum modules on HIV awareness and safe sex. However, such a proposal continues to be opposed by parents and administrators who fear condoms encourage teenage sexual experimentation and promiscuity.
Advertising concessions to portray condoms as being used only by heterosexual, married couples is, by implication, marginalizing the MSM and sexually active youth.
Health advocates point out that the Reproductive Health Law even contradicts its provision granting every person full access to information and services about reproductive health when the same law prohibits minors from purchasing condoms or volunteering for HIV testing without the written consent of their parents.
For Cebu, where HIV prevalence rates are between 40 and 50 percent among injection drug users (IDUs), the HRW recommends resuming the “harm reduction program” that distributed sterile equipment to prevent IDUs from sharing contaminated needles.
Perhaps the best gauge of the government’s commitment to HIV/Aids prevention is the decision of the Philippine Congress to cut the 2016 national budget for contraception. Without free condoms, low-income Filipinos are forced to buy or engage in unprotected sex, which makes it difficult to space children or protect oneself from sexually transmitted infections.
Access to condoms indicate a state’s commitment to its people’s human rights to health and reproductive choices.