United Press International - July 15, 2004
Daniel Brousek, UPI Peru Correspondent

As elsewhere, teens in Peru have become sexually active and are unlikely to remain constant with one partner, putting them at a greater risk for HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS.

According to reports from UNICEF, more than half of the population between the ages of 15 and 24 in more than a dozen countries (including Bolivia, Botswana, Ukraine and the Dominican Republic) have never even heard anyone speak about HIV/AIDS, or have wildly incorrect ideas about the transmission of the disease.

The U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women says that in the last few years most people infected with AIDS have been between 15 and 25 years old.

This figure is accurate for Peru, says Susana Chavez, the director of the Sexual Rights Program of the organization Flora Tristan. Chavez said that in the case of Peru, 43 percent of those sick with AIDS contracted the virus during their school years.

The Peruvian Health Ministry has 14,000 registered cases of people infected with AIDS, of which 6,000 contracted it during their school years. But, Chavez said, "In reality there are between 70,000 and a 100,000 cases of AIDS that are not found registered in annual lists, which would mean that there are 31,500 people who were infected during adolescence."

According to the CIA World Book, in 2001 there were 53,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS in Peru, or 0.4 percent of the population, with 3,900 deaths that year.

There is little sexual education in Peruvian high schools and the subject is not talked about in most homes, in a country that is 90 percent Roman Catholic.

In Peru, 13 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 19 become mothers, the number of abortions increased by 100,000 since last year, and only 1 out of every 3 adolescents uses any form of birth control in their sexual relationships.

These rates suggest that the content of the National Sexual Education Program of the Health Ministry has changed little or not at all in the past years to reflect the new reality of life for Peruvian adolescents and is now too obsolete to meet the new challenges of this population. The number of youths who have had sex by age 13 has tripled in recent years.

While they are conscious of the deficiencies in the Sexual Education Program, those in charge of it in the Health Ministry blame parents for their traditional, closed-minded attitude toward topics relating to sex. They point out that schools cannot move forward with change much faster than society as a whole does.

The Sexual Education Program was created in 1996, and with $5 million in funding from the U.N. Population Fund, it trained 40,000 teachers -- 10 percent of the total teaching staff -- and provided them with teaching guides and instructional materials.

But since 2000, the Peruvian government has drastically reduced the program's budget. In four years, only 10,000 additional instructors have been trained, and only 4,000 teaching guides have been printed.

Parliamentarian Hilderbrando Tapia has urged legislation to help control AIDS in the country.

"Countries like Peru recognize that poverty, underdevelopment and illiteracy are factors that contribute to the spread of AIDS. But in itself, AIDS is an epidemic that aggravates poverty and therefore prevents development in many countries," he said.

"An alarming growth in the magnitude and impact of AIDS worldwide is being publicized. This terrible disease is causing national and international emergencies, taking thousands of human lives and annulling decades of economic and social achievements."

"The number of cases of AIDS infection being reported to the Ministry of Health (in Peru) demonstrates an increasing rate of contraction of the disease, which affects the economic and social conditions of the country; approximately 70 percent of the total accumulated cases of AIDS in Peru are found in young adults, between 20 and 39 years of age, in a similar proportion of men and women. This affects the principal labor force of Peru," he said.

"In our legal code there exists Law No. 26,626, termed the Law to Combat AIDS. This same law that recognizes the right of patients with AIDS to receive medical attention ought to be used to make sure that the state provides adequate services through all of the health centers it administers or manages directly or indirectly," he said.

"Lamentably, this law has not fulfilled the objective for which it was created," Tapia added. "Repeated complaints have reduced the fight against AIDS to its most benign form, if not stopped it entirely, during the last two administrations of the Health Ministry.

Poor people cannot obtain state services because of low funding, he said.

"It is important for us to take charge of this grave situation, and formulate the mechanisms needed to help eradicate this plague. We clearly understand the right of every individual to reach the highest level of mental and physical health, but it should also be viewed in the context of the fight against poverty," the legislator said.

He said that Peru should consider as a priority legislation that provides free and universal access to the retrovirus for the public, as is the case in countries like Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala and Costa Rica.
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