Inter Press Service - June 22, 2001
Reem Haddad

AIDS cases have slowly increased over the past few years and NGO's fear that lack of knowledge about the virus may be the cause.

"People either don't have enough information or are not practising what they do know," said Safaa Jouni, the Youth and Women Officer at the Family Planning Association."Either way we are here to answer any questions they may have."

Statistics from the Lebanese Ministry of Health show that there are 613 reported cases of HIV-positive and AIDS cases since 1985. Almost 70 percent of the cases were contracted through sexual relations. But estimates of unreported cases set the number much higher, perhaps as high as 3,000 in a country with 3.4 million people.

Most of the reported cases were men between the ages of 31 and 40 years. Even more worrisome to NGOs - and contrary to the past when overseas travellers transmitted the virus - over 50 percent contracted the disease locally. While the numbers remain relatively low, NGOs fear that if questions about AIDS remain unanswered, the disease will spread much quicker.

The 'Soins Infirmiére et Développement Communautaire' (SIDC), an NGO which gives free healthcare to the poor, established the first hotline in 1994. It was during its regular lecture tours to schools and clubs that the team noticed that many listeners wanted to ask questions about sex but were too embarrassed. "We wanted people, especially young ones, to open up and ask us about sex," said Joumana Hermez, one of the directors and hotline operators at SIDC. "They were too embarrassed to go to their families so we wanted them to come to us anonymously."

Most of their callers tend to be males between the ages of 30 and 35 with most of the questions relating to sexual behaviour.

With sex education classes missing from schools, many teenagers end up receiving much of their information from pornography broadcast on pirated cable television. For a monthly fee of 10 dollars, households can receive an array of programmes. Among them are several European pornographic channels airing after midnight.

Such programmes are especially appealing to youngsters like 18- year-old Hassan and his school friends. "We discuss them the next morning," said Hassan. "We learn a lot. It's very glamorous."

The "glamour" of the programmes, however, fails to show the practice of safe sex. But Hassan doesn't really have anywhere else to turn. Sex remains a taboo subject in Lebanon. Girls are expected to remain virgins until marriage and even pre-marital sex for boys is sometimes frowned upon.

But according to a 2000 study by SIDC based on a survey by the Durex condoms manufacturing company, Lebanese teenagers are becoming sexually active at an earlier age. In 1999, the average age for losing one's virginity was 18.2 years. One year later, it had dropped to 15.9 years.

Only 20.6 percent of the 15 to 24 year olds surveyed reported changing their sexual behaviour from fear of AIDS and just over 23 percent reported using condoms.

"And yet, 99.9 percent of teenagers we surveyed said that they were fully knowledgeable about the AIDS virus and the ways it is spread," said Hermez. But fear of being recognised in pharmacies or shops buying condoms has inhibited many teenagers from practising safe sex. Teenagers like Rania, whoat 16 knows about AIDS but has never used a condom with her various partners.

"I would be much too embarrassed to buy any," she said. "I just leave it up to the boy. It's his job to get them. But they don't get them either. I'm not too sure if I should insist on it or not."

The hotline proved to be successful and two years later, another three organisations opened their own lines and are taking questions Monday to Friday from 8am to 4 pm.

But like SIDC before them, they quickly noticed that the questions were not just limited to AIDS but enquiries about all kinds of sex-related problems. "We start off by answering questions about AIDS but then find ourselves explaining some of the basics of reproductive health," said Safaa Jouni, from the Family Planning Association, which launched its hotline in 1996.

For the past year and half, Jouni has been receiving calls from a 14-year-old girl. The child wanted to commit suicide because her older brother had been raping her for the past few years.

"She didn't understand what was happening to her until recently," said Jouni, "She was petrified and didn't know what to do." Safaa encouraged the girl to tell her parents and seek medical help. It took more than a year of persuasion but the girl finally turned to her parents.

"The brother was removed from the house and the girl began to forget about committing suicide," said Jouni. "She still calls me until now and I still don't know her name."

Most of the FPA's callers have been unmarried males between the ages of 17 until 31 years. Sometimes, Safaa can receive up to 30 to 40 calls per day. This is usually the result of billboards popping up around the country once in a while encouraging anyone who is "confused" and in need of "answers about AIDS" to contact the listed hotline numbers.

Most of the questions Jouni has received revolved around AIDS, fears of pregnancy and sexual problems.

The NGOs occasionally meet to compare notes and discuss difficult cases. Future plans include uniting the lines in the four organisations and opening a hot line centre. .

Meanwhile, teenagers like 17-year-old May have tucked the number of the hotlines in her wallet. "I've heard of it," she said. "I've never called but it's nice to know that it's there."(END/IPS/HE/rh/cr/01)

* Editors Advisory. This is one in a series of IPS features previewing the United Nations Special Session on AIDS, to be held in New York June 25-27. It is the first-ever Special Session devoted to a single disease.

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