AIDS 2012: Sexual rights are human rights

By Tewodros Melesse (Director-General, IPPF)

A mysterious ‘slimming’ disease appeared while I was doing community-based reproductive health work in Africa. Nobody knew what it was or where it came from. Some people even wondered if it was the food. People thought that those who were affected were cursed. Of course this disease is now what we know as AIDS. My passion for this issue still comes from seeing how people reacted to the disease all those years ago – and witnessing the fear associated with the virus. But we must not forget that this is very much a disease that affects an individual, and everyone has their own story. 

After all these years, HIV is still a challenging public health issue. Why is this different to the challenges of other health issues like cancer? In essence it’s because HIV, like other STIs, is related to sexuality. With HIV, your sexuality often becomes public. The stigma and discrimination towards people living with HIV goes beyond being infected with a virus. Society makes judgements such as a person infected with HIV must be promiscuous or assumed to be homosexual. 

As HIV is mostly transmitted sexually, IPPF should strive for a comprehensive approach connected to sexuality. This includes providing age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education, as knowledge and awareness are still key to prevention. Clinics, too, need to provide information and give advice as well as services. 

We need to recognize that HIV is here. HIV needs to be normalized, as it is a part of our society. This can be done through education, cross-cutting services and mainstream activities. 

We also need to keep up the momentum, although no longer seen as an immediate ‘death threat’ because of the greater access to life saving treatment (ARVs), society and politicians still need to respond. HIV is still a tragedy. From history, we have witnessed diseases that have almost disappeared, yet have come back, with greater strength. Is this because people become too complacent? ARVs have been a great advancement, but we must continue our collective prevention efforts in a comprehensive, integrated way, if we are to create a world with ‘zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS-related deaths’. 

Download the AIDS 2012 issue of the IPPF HIV Update newsletter:http://www.ippf.org/resources/publications/HIV-Update-newsletter