The Hindu Business Line : Are we only scratching the surface of AIDS?

"FIVE people worldwide die of AIDS every minute of every day. HIV has hit every corner of the globe, infecting more than 42 million men, women and children, five million of them last year alone."

Thus reads the screen that hits you when you type www.worldaidsday.org and press enter. On December 1, when the world observes AIDS Day, you would be seeing a lot of news on the TV about campaigns and speeches, reports and analyses, comments and what not. But the lurking fear is whether we are simply scratching the surface.

Our government continues to differ when it comes to statistics on AIDS, even as the global media sends shivers down our spine about India's ranking in the world tally. But the problem is that the issue does not simply exist in normal thinking; everybody is too preoccupied with politics, cinema, food and religion, apart from a host of other things. That is why, ads such as the recent ones on Pulli Raja are topics for fun rather than waking up to the malaise, which one hopes the sponsors are only too aware of.

In fact, while most ads keep prolonging what the Raja does or does not do, there was one hoarding that seemed to gleefully announce the answer to the original question whether he would contract AIDS: as an anti-climax, it said, yes, with pictures of dancing condoms, as if in vindication.

"Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. But how much do you really know about the disease?" asks Jeremy Laurance, writing in The Independent. "Can you be sure you're not one of the 16,000 people in Britain with HIV who don't know it?" The author goes on to discuss a dozen myths about AIDS. For instance, "One in four young people think kissing can transmit the virus and one in 10 thinks it can be caught from toilet seats. It can't. Such mistaken beliefs fuel discrimination against those infected and increase the stigma of the disease which conspire to keep it secret."

Other common myths are that since AIDS is curable, it is no longer a serious threat; it is receding; it is easy to avoid; only gays are affected by AIDS; it can be simply prevented by telling people to use condoms and practise safe sex; it has passed its peak; or that it is God's wrath on a promiscuous world.

If you are serious enough, another site, www.aids.about.com, lists 10 myths and also 10 ways to be healthy. Among the myths at this site are: HIV is the same as AIDS; people over 50 don't get HIV; we don't need a condom for oral sex; and my family doctor can treat my HIV. To add to ignorance, most people keep wondering how somebody with AIDS would look like.

In India, however, the doubts that rankle the minds of many seem to revolve not about AIDS or how to battle it, but whether the size of this or that is normal or abnormal. So, in a TV programme, you would have a doctor explaining patiently the right dimensions. If that sounds like Nero playing the fiddle even as fires raged too close, what could be more shocking are the full-page ads one finds in many vernacular magazines, on `regaining youth'. They follow a set pattern: The doc is one of those `alternative therapy-wallahs' whose pop was in the same line and whose grand-pop was also doing the same thing; and the result of the medicine would be obvious in 15 days.

One such ad lists several reasons for loss of virility in men: First, self-pleasure. Second, spouse being older. Third, homosexuality. And so on. Now, you don't need much coaching to search the Web to know if these statements are myths or true.

You could rue that ethics governing ads could look the other way when it comes to floating wrong notions on crucial topics. Or that these docs make good money, what with an ignorant population wallowing in private fears. What is needed, however, is an information revolution - where facts get conveyed widely on subjects that have long remained taboo here.

EeAndOhEe@hotmail.com

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