Inter Press Service - November 28, 2003
María Isabel García

Angel plays Gabriela, a high school student in a low-income Bogotá neighbourhood, in "Francisco el matemático" (Francisco the mathematician). The series is broadcast daily by RCN Televisión and has become a national hit with its plots based on real-life stories and its agile camera-work.

Both the character and the actress are in the age group, according to studies by the capital's health secretariat, of greatest risk of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the precursor to AIDS.

"We are trying to put an end to false beliefs like 'with a condom you don't feel the same pleasure' and that 'if a woman carries a condom she's promiscuous'," Angel said in a conversation with IPS.

Just over half of the 220,000 people with HIV/AIDS in Colombia are 15 to 35 years old. In Bogotá in particular the highest incidence is among women 15 to 24 years old, says the capital's health secretary, José Cardona.

These figures are among the main motives behind the Bogotá municipal government's launch of a campaign with the slogan "For love or for pleasure, for your future and mine, the condom always".

The purpose is to foment "healthy, responsible and pleasurable" sexual habits among the younger population.

Art contests centred on the condom, the free distribution of seven million condoms at entertainment centres and schools, and conferences and workshops are part of the official municipal strategy to step up prevention of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The Bogotá campaign is reinforced by a national effort carried out by Profamilia, a non-governmental organisation specialising in guidance and services related to sexual and reproductive health.

Actress Angel is the public face of this NGO, which is the Colombian affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Angel says she joined forces with Profamilia two years ago as a spokeswoman and liaison with high schools and youth organisations, which has helped her realise that "girls and women are more idealistic about love, and we too easily let ourselves be persuaded to not use a condom" in sexual relations.

While promoting the use of condoms among adolescents who have sex, the campaign provides answers to frequently asked questions in an attempt to give the lie to fallacies about these prophylactics.

"If I carry a condom am I a woman 'de plan'?" is one such question, which refers to the local expression for women considered to have an active sex life. "Yes, the 'plan' to take care of myself, the plan to protect myself," says Angel in a public service announcement that is widely broadcast by radio and TV stations.

"It is essential to fight machismo. Men should feel proud to be with women who carry condoms. And if neither the man nor the woman has one, the word 'no' is an option and a good contraceptive method," she says.

The preventative and integral approach taken by both the national and municipal campaigns is adapted to the recommendations made by the authorities in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, such as Nafis Sadik, United Nations special envoy for the disease in Asia.

Ahead of World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, Sadik said this week in Bogotá that women must have the power to direct their sex lives and their reproductive health. The Pakistani also stressed that the state and civil society must work together, and maintain a focus on education, as well as prevention and early diagnosis of the disease.

Latin America is third in the world in terms of the number of people in the region with HIV, after sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, said the U.N. official.

UNAIDS (Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS) says there are two million people living with HIV in Latin America, including the estimated 200,000 people who were infected with the virus in 2002. At least 100,000 people in the region died of AIDS last year.

The anti-HIV/AIDS campaign in Bogotá involves programmes of the health and education secretariats, and of the city's culture and tourism, and sports and recreation institutes.

"Bogotá is an exception in the national panorama," says Cecilia López, director of the Fundación Agenda Colombia, which organised the seminar "HIV/AIDS, development and economic impact", Nov. 25 and 26 in the capital.

López told IPS she believes there is a "direct relationship" between the higher incidence of HIV in women, which since 1998 has increased from seven to 23 percent of all cases, and the end that year of required sex education classes in secondary schools.

Ricardo García, UNAIDS representative in Colombia, agrees with that interpretation.

Undoubtedly, he said, the decline of sex education programmes in the schools, "which at one point were a model for the region, is one of the factors behind the rising curve of AIDS incidence in this country," he said.

A lack of adequate information, becoming sexually active at an early age, fears rooted in religious beliefs, and a double standard are factors that also contribute to higher rates of teen pregnancies.

In this cultural context, as the campaign got underway, Bogotá's Mayor Antanas Mockus issued the appeal: "Sin, but with a condom".

A Profamilia national survey of health and demographics conducted in 2000 found that 15 percent of the adolescent Colombian girls consulted had given birth and four percent were pregnant at the time of the study.

The study also revealed that, despite almost universal awareness of the existence of HIV/AIDS (99 percent), "many taboos and erroneous beliefs persist."

Eighty-four percent of the women surveyed believed that an infected individual cannot continue to have sexual relations, 40 percent said that a teacher with the disease cannot continue teaching, and 36 percent thought that people who are HIV positive -- even if they have not developed AIDS -- should be suspended from their jobs.

Despite ignorance about the disease and how it affects people, mayor Mockus agreed with U.N. special envoy Sadik that "it is possible to change behaviours that undermine coexistence." He said he believes that the people of Bogotá have made changes towards becoming a more tolerant society.

That is one of the reasons that people with HIV/AIDS from other parts of the country "seek refuge in the capital, because they fell less marginalised and have greater access to treatment and medications," said city health secretary Cardona.

But he warned that HIV infection rates could continue to rise, although the prevalence in Colombia -- 0.4 to 0.8 percent -- is less than in other areas of the Caribbean Basin, where it is more than 1.0 percent in 12 countries.

UNAIDS reports that HIV rates surpass two percent among pregnant women in the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago. It is precisely this population in Colombian capital -- pregnant women -- who are greatest risk.

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+ Profamilia (http://www.profamilia.org.co/profamilia/english/INDEX.HTM)

+ UNAIDS (http://www.unaids.org/en/default.asp)

(END/IPS/LA/HE-SD-PR/TRASO-LD/MIG/DM/03)

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