Inter Press Service - December 1, 2000
Mithre J. Sandrasagra

Highlighting this terrifying pattern during a town hall meeting in observance of World AIDS Day at the UN Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) pointed out that in "South Africa and Zimbabwe one in four young women are living with HIV/AIDS, as compared with one in 10 young men in the same age group".

"This is why 'Men Make a Difference' the theme of this year's World AIDS Day is so important," Brown said.

"By challenging accepted ideas about masculinity, working to change the way men viewed sexuality, and changing the ways in which boys are socialised to become men, much could be done in combating the spread of AIDS,"

Under-Secretary-General Kensaku Hogen said in his welcoming remarks at the meeting.

Today there are more than 34 million people living with HIV/AIDS and in 1999 alone about 5.4 million new infections occurred, Harri Holkeri, UN General Assembly President told those gathered.

Holkeri stressed that "men are involved in almost every case of HIV transmission in the world".

A co-sponsor of Friday's meeting the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) - a coalition of seven agencies UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), UNDP, UN Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), UN Population Fund (UNFPA), UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) the World Health Organisation and the World Bank - estimates that every day about 15,000 people are infected with the HIV.

United Nations studies have shown that 45 percent of women with HIV had been infected by a single contact, and that contact was usually with their regular partner.

"Infection from men to women was much greater that the reverse, and men contracted the virus much more frequently through drug use and other contacts," Elhadj Sy of the UNAIDS New York office said.

It is time for men to acquire pro-active health-maintaining behaviour, and respond to participate in both prevention and treatment, Sy continued. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a statement made Friday pointed to the role of men, "who can make a particular difference by being more caring, by taking fewer risks and by facing AIDS head-on".

Deputy-Secretary-General Louise Frechette stressing that "silence is deadly" said that men could show more care and consideration for others by taking fewer risks and by facing the HIV/AIDS issue head-on.

"AIDS is a formidable challenge in large part because of the difficulty of transforming societal, cultural and gender norms and creating open dialogue about sex, empowerment of women, and the recognition of the role of men in responding to the epidemic," Brown said.

"By focusing on the role of men, 2000 World AIDS Day highlighted the critical importance of changing male attitudes and behaviours, including a propensity for sexual risk taking," he continued.

Emphasising the importance of the 2000 theme Holkeri said that masculinity is a positive force whose full potential must be harnessed to stop the spread of AIDS.

Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of UNFPA said that men's behaviour will decide how quickly the virus is transmitted, and to whom. Sadik Friday called upon men to use condoms, limit the number of their sexual partners and to join in life-saving programmes.

The participants at the town hall meeting here raised several other concerns, including the need to move beyond rhetoric to concrete action, the need to fight HIV/AIDS as an all out war, and the need to promote the positive "glamour" of healthy sexual behaviour.

The strategies of loveLife, a South African non-governmental organisation that uses brand identity and a massive media campaign to influence the sexual behaviour of adolescents were featured.

LoveLife members Mashapa Macheba, Joel Makitla, David Schneider, Eric Mandla Sibeko and Judi Nwokedi emphasised the importance of the role of men by pointing out that "education must deal with the broader context of sexual behaviour". By incorporating AIDS education into features on fashion, music, film and other pop culture media, the loveLife campaign enjoys remarkable popularity among South African youth - whose HIV infection rate is currently the highest in the world.

According to loveLife, though 98 percent of South Africans are aware of HIV/AIDS and its means of transmission, condom usage among men has not risen above 10 percent over the past five years.

Education of young people is the best insurance for our future we can take, Holkeri said.

Next June the General Assembly will convene a special session to review all aspects of the AIDS problem and to secure a co-ordinated global commitment in the struggle against it.

At the Millennium Summit three months ago, world leaders resolved that by 2015 the spread of HIV/AIDS will be reversed, Annan pointed out, "next June we will have an unprecedented opportunity to follow up on that resolve". (END/IPS/HE/mjs/da/00).
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