Let’s get it right on HIV/AIDS

I REFER to the letter by Tauna in The National on Friday in which he supports promoting fear to try and prevent HIV transmission and in the process denigrates the scientifically proven strategies that do actually prevent HIV transmission.
Tauna also seems to think that all people with the HIV virus are dead.
Actually we are all dead, because we are all going to die at some point in the near or more distant future – including Tauna of course.
People with HIV have caught a serious disease, often through no fault of their own.
At the antenatal clinic at Port Moresby General Hospital we see that about 2 per cent of mothers are HIV positive and I see that most of them have got the infection through no fault of their own; it was a previous relationship or their current husband who gave it to them.
Tauna seems to think that condoms and HIV treatment (ARTs) cause people to have promiscuous sex.
I feel as though he is living on another planet; some people are having promiscuous sex and some people are having faithful sex and most of us make mistakes occasionally.
Jesus said, “Those of you with no sin, cast the first stone”, and no one threw a stone. If Tauna was there he might actually have cast a stone.
Anyway, condoms prevent HIV transmission very well.
And HIV treatment, when taken reliably and for the rest of the person’s life, lowers the amount of virus in the body of that person to such a low level that they hardly ever can transmit the virus to anybody else.
So ART therapy prevents transmission of HIV too.
I have to say it is disappointing when our daily media print letters that are patently untrue, incorrect and run the risk of causing fear among people that is detrimental to a functioning society.

Professor glen Mola