World AIDS Day 2008: Bloggers Unite

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It’s easy to think that AIDS is something for other people to worry about – gay people, drug users, people who sleep around. This is wrong – all teens, whoever they are, wherever they live need to take the threat of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, seriously. To be able to protect yourself, you need to know the facts, and know how to avoid becoming infected. The truth is that HIV is a big problem for young people, as well as adults. In 2007, it is estimated that there were 2 million people under 15 living with HIV.

270,000 children die of AIDS every year. If nothing is done then more than 1 million will die by 2010. The vast majority of these child deaths can be prevented by stopping the transmission of HIV from mothers to their babies. If babies don’t become infected with HIV then they won’t develop AIDS and die.

Together, we bloggers can reduce the stigma of this pandemic through our words, voices and actions. We are aware that this disease can be treated effectively and that it’s spread around the world can be arrested. We know we can make a difference and today we are doing just that. We are sharing information about AIDS and it’s prevention.

Facts on HIV & AIDS in America

HIV & AIDS in America
Treatment and care for AIDS in America
HIV prevention in America
HIV testing in America

Help and advice for HIV & AIDS in America

Faith based abstinence only programs are ineffective

Currently, the American federal government champions the abstinence-only approach, giving around $170 million tax dollars each year to states and community groups to teach kids to say no to sex. This funding precludes mention of birth control and condoms, unless it is to emphasize their failure rates.

World AIDS Day 2008

Abstinence students still having sex – Study tracked 2,057 young people in government-funded programs -  April. 16, 2007 – Students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex a few years later as those who did not, according to a long-awaited study mandated by Congress.

Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes, and they first had sex at about the same age as their control group counterparts — 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.

As Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.—director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania—said in his article, “Blind faith on sex-ed approach puts kids at risk” – “Actually, you cannot expect abstinence-only sex ed to be protective, effective or in any way useful at all. Ever. Period. Enough already. It’s time to pull the plug on abstinence-only sex education. There are too many lives at stake to put up with a reproductive-health policy that is willing to kill and disable our kids out of an allegiance to a blind faith in something that does not work.” See: America’s teens need sex education

Facts on Sex Education Policy in the United States

(1) Currently, 35 states mandate either sex education or education about HIV/AIDS and other STIs, but their laws tend to be very general. Policies specifying the content of sex education are typically set at the local level. Source: Guttmacher Institute, Sex and STD/HIV education, State Policies in Brief, November 2006, accessed Nov. 28, 2006.

(2) More than two out of three public school districts have a policy to teach sex education. The remaining one-third of districts leave policy decisions up to individual schools or teachers.

Source: Landry DJ et al, Abstinence promotion and the provision of information about contraception in public school district sexuality education policies, Family Planning Perspectives, 1999, 31(6):280–286.

(3) Eighty-six percent of the public school districts that have a policy to teach sex education require that abstinence be promoted. Some 35% require abstinence to be taught as the only option for unmarried people and either prohibit the discussion of contraception altogether or limit discussion to its ineffectiveness. The other 51% have a policy to teach abstinence as the preferred option for teens and permit discussion of contraception as an effective means of preventing pregnancy and STIs. ibid

(4) More than half of the districts in the South with a policy to teach sex education have an abstinence-only policy, compared with one in five of such districts in the Northeast. ibid

(5) The pregnancy rates and STD rates were higher for American teens who were in the abstinence only programs than those of teens who did have sex education programs and who did not take pledges.

• More than nine in 10 teachers believe that students should be taught about contraception, but one in four are prohibited from doing so.
• One in five teachers believe that restrictions on sex education are preventing them from meeting their students’ needs.
• Eighty-two percent of adults support comprehensive sex education that teaches students about both abstinence and other methods of preventing pregnancy, STDs, including HIV AIDS.
• Only one-third of adults surveyed support abstinence only education, while half oppose the abstinence-only approach.

Reference: PDF file Facts on Sex Education In the United States

teens with AIDS

Reality check

IMO it’s appalling that one third of American parents of  teens would choose only to support teaching abstinence to them and then pat themselves on the back for being “righteous” in a religious sense. Their failure to provide their own children with comprehensive sex education, including contraception and protection from STDs, such as HIV AIDS  is  unconscionable.  Even more unconscionable is that fact that this ignorance in the form of “faith based abstinence only programs” is being exported to countries like Africa where AIDS is rampant.

The HIV & AIDS epidemic in Africa

AIDS in Africa summary
The impact of HIV & AIDS in Africa
AIDS in Africa: questions and answers

It is only by acting, by demanding that comprehensive sex education programs be funded  with federal tax dollars which are a currently being directed to only to faith based abstience only programs, that we have the ability to prevent the spread of HIV AIDS in American teens.