Health : A Closer Look at the HIV/AIDS Crisis in the Philippines
Manila Philippines—Jake is 21. He had sex for the very first time at 18 with a friend and the second time was three years later with a man he met online. Months later, Jake graduated cum laude from college and was waiting to go onboard a ship for his first job. But it never happened.
Jake was diagnosed HIV-positive, Rappler reports.
He may be devastated but Jake is accepting of his fate. “At the end of the day it’s still my fault,” he said, “because I did not avoid it.” Before Jake’s diagnosis however, he had no idea about HIV, safe sex, and condoms and its availability.
But Jake, sadly, is just one of the many in the Philippines.
The Situation
In this highly religious and conservative country, sex is considered a taboo even to this day. Romantic relationship while studying (even those who are in college) is mostly discouraged (by practically everyone: parents, educators, relatives, and sometimes even by friends) while having sex before and outside of marriage is frowned upon, and buying condoms? It is deemed scary and embarrassing because you will be labeled promiscuous.
‘True love waits’: School bans romance between students https://t.co/EAlhWlSpcn
— ABS-CBN News Channel (@ANCALERTS) August 16, 2016
Nothing extraordinary on all counts, you say, after all it’s the same wherever you go in the world. But never mind that sex is a taboo or buying condoms is embarrassing, most of the country’s youth (even some of the older ones) has to know first that condoms exist in the first place. Or what it is for.
On top of these, only 17% of those aged 15 to 24 in the Philippines know what HIV/AIDS is.
In the Philippine society, it is a sin to engage in sex without marriage. It is a sin to use contraceptives in all forms because it kills a life. These beliefs affect reproductive health policies and health education in the country. Sex education promotes sex, they say, and encouraging condom and use of other contraceptives is anti-life and is a crime which merits excommunication.
The reasoning persists even after Pope Francis visited the Philippines and told them that “good Catholics do not have to breed like rabbits.” The Pope encouraged responsible parenting saying that having 7 or 8 children (or 22) is the opposite of that.
In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that use of condoms to prevent HIV transmission is the responsible thing to do even if it is not a “real or moral solution” to HIV. Use of condoms in this case, is considered pro-life because it means “saving someone else’s life.”
The Effect
The law prohibits Filipinos under the age of 18 to access condom or undergo HIV testing without parental consent.
In some parts of the country, condom distribution is prohibited. DOH however, has started condom distribution this year, a move that was blocked by the country’s Department of Education because “minor students still need parental consent (mainly those in high school).”
Yet another sad story of how religion poisons everything.
Sounds a lot like the United States, but things are getting more relaxed as time go’s by. Yea my parents were all moral etc, the no sex before marriage, gay being outright wrong, adult movies and even R rated stuff was out, and of course the churches are one of the biggest promoters of this moral, no sex until marriage society. Religion has been the biggest player in this no sex, no gays, only in marriage thing, and big in getting passed all kinds of moral and anti gay laws. I myself tried to go along with the moral ways, and finally as I got older found myself stuck in a marriage that I don’t like but can’t get out of because of financial reasons. I’ve seen that the more something is promoted wrong the more people want to participate in it. That’s why sex and HIV in the Philippines is so rampant. The more everyone is told no, the more everyone will want to do it. I now have several gay friends and I am so happy when were together. Yes, HIV exists, and I really believe there could be a cure for it, but the big drug companies don’t want to find a cure, there’s big money in all the remedies their promoting and selling. Even here in the US, condoms are on the back shelf, birth control isn’t talked about, like prevention is some kind of secret that isn’t suppose to exist. Everyone should be taught about safe sex, gay life style, marriage (and why it’s not for everyone) from the time they are old enough to understand. In time as all the older people who try to control our lives die off, maybe this world will slowly get more accepting of the gay lifestyle.
This is why, as Frank Zappa said, “You can’t run a country by a book of religion/ Not by a heap or a lump or a smidgen”.
Fealty to a religious myth kills. It kills with poverty, it kills with ignorance, it kills with biology.
Dare to be moral and ethical without religion.