While presenting this year’s Medical Contribution Award, Premier William Lai (賴清德) said that “the primary source of HIV/AIDS infection today is no longer needles, but from homosexual males engaged in sexual activity.” Lai’s comments have caused consternation.
At a time when Taiwan is making great strides toward becoming a more open and diverse society, Lai’s comments have touched a raw nerve with frontline health workers and community groups.
However, what many have failed to notice is that on the same day, the Liver Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Foundation was awarded for its long-term dedication to fight hepatitis B and C, caused by viruses with the same routes of transmission as for HIV/AIDS.
People become infected with hepatitis either through unprotected sex or sharing a needle while taking drugs. Despite this, carriers of hepatitis and high-risk groups for contracting hepatitis do not attract the same attention from politicians, let alone certain groups that harbor an ulterior motive to tarnish the name of people with HIV/AIDS.
As early as 1981, when HIV/AIDS started to appear in humans on a large scale, labels such as “dirty,” “unclean,” “sinful” and “death” began to be attached to the disease.
Since the turn of the century, convenient and effective drugs to combat HIV/AIDS have become universally available, while medical treatment is also able to control and suppress the disease, rendering it all but noninfectious.
In addition, scientific research has proven that taking preventative medicine before becoming exposed to the disease in addition to using condoms increases the effectiveness of prevention measures against HIV/AIDS.
Yet, despite these developments, the knowledge and attitudes of Taiwanese politicians are stuck in the previous century, as they fail to keep pace with advancements in medicine and public health.
By deliberately emphasizing “individual behavior” and “high-risk groups” as both the cause of HIV/AIDS and the reason for its increased prevalence, while simultaneously neglecting psychological and social factors and other structural problems, politicians reinforce negative stereotypes toward HIV/AIDS, which causes labels attached to HIV/AIDS patients to become more entrenched.
The goal in effective HIV/AIDS prevention is to find a way to reduce the fear of HIV/AIDS among the public so that more people are willing to undergo screening and treatment for the disease. More effective and cheaper pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) could halt the spread of new infections so that it no longer poses a threat as an infectious disease.
Only through building correct ideas and knowledge around HIV/AIDS can these goals be realized. Ignorance breeds fear. It is therefore the fundamental duty of politicians to formulate policies that help to eliminate prejudice around HIV/AIDS.
Developing effective prevention of HIV/AIDS will take years of hard work. It only takes one slip of the tongue to destroy trust built up over many years between frontline health workers and community groups.
Lai’s blunder has also given groups hostile to the gay community ammunition to attack them.
It is disheartening that Lai, with his background in medicine and in his position as premier, has through a careless choice of words handicapped frontline health workers from carrying out their vital work.
Ku Wen-wei is an attending physician at the Department of Infectious Diseases at Taipei Veterans General Hospital’s Hsinchu branch.
Translated by Edward Jones
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