Low rate of HIV in Philippines perplexes officials

Mercury News ^ | 4/20/03 | Seth Mydans - NY Times

[NormsRevenge]

MANILA, Philippines -Public health officials say they are stumped by a paradox in the Philippines, where a very low rate of condom use and a very low rate of HIV infection seem to be going hand in hand.

AIDS-prevention efforts often focus on the use of condoms, but they are not widely available here -- and are mostly shunned -- in this conservative Roman Catholic country.

[george wythe]

Philipino prostitutes are "clean."
The sex tourists will mob the place.

[Larry Lucido]

Have they factored in the presence or absence of promiscuous homosexual activity coupled with drug injestion via inhalants or shared needles, or would that be irrelevant?

[reformed_dem]

Perhaps, if they're shunning the use of condoms as it goes against the church's teaching, then they are also shunning recreational and/or gay sex with abstinence being the order of the day? Just my WAG.

[Larry Lucido]

As usual, great minds think alike!

[jocon307]

Maybe it's just because they are not a nation of gay sluts and junkies. Has anyone thought of that?

[knuthom]

conservative Roman Catholic country

Perhaps this has something to do with it.

[lilylangtree]

"Roman Catholic Church is conservative and politically powerful."

Religion has its uses. May sound like a broken record, but the Bible does speak of consequences for those that participate in perverted sex.

[AntiGuv]

Actually, the Phillipines reportedly have one of the highest rates of casual male homosexual activity in the world, which is another reason this would seem so perplexing. A great proportion of Filipino males (some estimates suggest over half) have traded sex for money or favors according to research I'd read about some long while ago.

If you want my idle guess, the Filipinos somehow managed a high rate of the CCR5-delta 32 mutation which confers resistance to HIV. This mutation appears mostly in European populations, increasing toward Scandinavia and decreasing toward the Mediterranean, but it's possible that it or something comparable also appeared in the Phillipines.

[AntiGuv]

See post #9...

[Domestic Church]

Yep. They are devout practicing Catholics by and large and follow Church teachings on chastity and marriage.

[TheMole]

Of course the small size of the needle drug scene is a key factor ... but there are no "public health" millions in saying that.

[NormsRevenge]

Nahhh.. too easy of an answer. ;-) We need to keep in mind that the Philipines is a Roman Catholic nation, for the most part. except for the infiltrated Islamic crowd and rebels.

They, too, have fought their battles with sexual abuse by priests and international sex trade perverts for years.

God Save the Philippines. It looks like he is doing a darn good job, so far.

[AntiGuv]

I've found my source list from my old dissertation (a comparative review of the sociolegal regulation of sexual relations across nations & cultures) so I can post citations if anyone would prefer to not simply take my word for it...

[gcruse]

" seem to be going hand in hand"

Well, there's your answer. Hell, these people
haven't even got to first base, yet!

[Notwithstanding]

The Catholic Church may have millions in its ranks, but its doctrine is rock solid. What is more, God's truth is true both supernaturally and in the natural world. Thus following the supernatural moral reasons for avoiding promiscuity just happen - golly - to result in less disease, better health, and less emotional tumult from crappy relationships.

[Notwithstanding]

That shoulkd have read:

"The Catholic Church may have millions ____OF SINNERS____ in its ranks, but its doctrine is rock solid. What is more, God's truth is true both supernaturally and in the natural world. Thus following the supernatural moral reasons for avoiding promiscuity just happen - golly - to result in less disease, better health, and less emotional tumult from crappy relationships."

[Cicero]

In African countries where the UN goes in and distributes condoms widely, AIDS rates shoot up. This has happened again and again.

It's well known that condoms are maybe 15% ineffective in preventing pregnancies, and a great deal less effective in blocking HIV.

Maybe ten years ago, at a meeting of several hundred sexologists, a woman doctor stood up in the back of the auditorium and asked, "How many of you would trust a thin piece of latex between you and certain death?" Nobody raised his hand. Yet these same people continue to advocate condoms for everyone else--probably because they also favor population control. They could care less how many third-world men and women, as well as babies, die from one cause or another.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Ahem, I say, ahem, we don't wish to have logic inserted into this debate.

[mewzilla]

How many people in the country have been screened?