AIDS, the theft of futures
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In the last years, another killer has come to Latin America to steal the lives of thousands of children-- HIV/AIDS
You can walk into any store in Latin America and you will find pornography, but you will not find sex education books or condoms. Many young people in Latin America have multiple partners before the age of 13. This comes from a lack of knowledge, sex education, and strong family structures. Most children do not attend school for very long, if at all, because they must work to help their families survive. There is no funding for AIDS education or treatment services. There is no government-subsidized HIV-testing, and the public is not pushing for it because they believe AIDS is a "homosexual disease." AIDS education can seem like a luxury if you have no food.
The spread of AIDS among street children will no doubt increase dramatically in the next few years. We must also put HIV/AIDS among street children on the political agenda throughout the developing world. But, too, we must raise awareness among the resource-rich as to the social and human costs of their ways of living. Street children, whether they are murdered or taken by AIDS, are victims of economic violence, what some would passively call "poverty."
They are children of the poorest of the poor, whose numbers and level of poverty has only increased in recent years -- as the rich have gotten richer. Abuse and abandonment make street children leave their homes and take to the streets. Abuse and abandonment also make them die there.
Innocence Lost
Some facts on the sexual behaviour of street children in Guatemala.
A study of 143 street children between the ages of 7 and 17 in Guatemala City reported:
About 70% had one to two partners per day; 4.2% had three to four partners per day; and 25.1% (92.31% of the girls), reported more than four partners per day. 93% referred to having had previous cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STD).
The children, at the time of being interviewed, presented actual cases of: genital herpes, 78.3%; gonorrhea, 46.65%; papilomatosis, 27.3%; vaginal trichomoniasis, 13.29%; chancroids, 11.7%; and scabies, 69.9%. 100% of the children used solvents, such as glue, as their drug of choice. 96.5% use drugs daily; 3.5% weekly. None of the children used contraceptives.
Further, the study also reported:
100% of children interviewed had been sexually abused. Among them, more than 53% reported they were abused by family members; 5.95% were abused by friends; 2.7% by neighbors; and 46% by people they didn't know. 64.1% of the girls reported that the first person with whom they had sexual relations was their father or mother; 10.2%, uncle or aunt; 10.2%, brother or sister; 2.6%, friend; 5.1%, boyfriend or girlfriend; 7.7% other.
A high tide of infection, and still rising
The epidemic appears to be heterosexually driven and rising rapidly. Many of the countries in Central and South America have limited data on HIV prevalence in potential high-risk groups. AIDS case reports are incomplete, reflecting trends in infection of several years ago and are hard to interpret. Data now suggests that the epidemic is increasing in all countries, while governments are doing less.
You can walk into any store in Latin America and you will find pornography, but you will not find sex education books or condoms. Many young people in Latin America have multiple partners before the age of 13. This comes from a lack of knowledge, sex education, and strong family structures. Most children do not attend school for very long, if at all, because they must work to help their families survive. There is no funding for AIDS education or treatment services. There is no government-subsidized HIV-testing, and the public is not pushing for it because they believe AIDS is a "homosexual disease." AIDS education can seem like a luxury if you have no food.
The spread of AIDS among street children will no doubt increase dramatically in the next few years. We must also put HIV/AIDS among street children on the political agenda throughout the developing world. But, too, we must raise awareness among the resource-rich as to the social and human costs of their ways of living. Street children, whether they are murdered or taken by AIDS, are victims of economic violence, what some would passively call "poverty."
They are children of the poorest of the poor, whose numbers and level of poverty has only increased in recent years -- as the rich have gotten richer. Abuse and abandonment make street children leave their homes and take to the streets. Abuse and abandonment also make them die there.
Innocence Lost
Some facts on the sexual behaviour of street children in Guatemala.
A study of 143 street children between the ages of 7 and 17 in Guatemala City reported:
About 70% had one to two partners per day; 4.2% had three to four partners per day; and 25.1% (92.31% of the girls), reported more than four partners per day. 93% referred to having had previous cases of sexually transmitted diseases (STD).
The children, at the time of being interviewed, presented actual cases of: genital herpes, 78.3%; gonorrhea, 46.65%; papilomatosis, 27.3%; vaginal trichomoniasis, 13.29%; chancroids, 11.7%; and scabies, 69.9%. 100% of the children used solvents, such as glue, as their drug of choice. 96.5% use drugs daily; 3.5% weekly. None of the children used contraceptives.
Further, the study also reported:
100% of children interviewed had been sexually abused. Among them, more than 53% reported they were abused by family members; 5.95% were abused by friends; 2.7% by neighbors; and 46% by people they didn't know. 64.1% of the girls reported that the first person with whom they had sexual relations was their father or mother; 10.2%, uncle or aunt; 10.2%, brother or sister; 2.6%, friend; 5.1%, boyfriend or girlfriend; 7.7% other.
A high tide of infection, and still rising
The epidemic appears to be heterosexually driven and rising rapidly. Many of the countries in Central and South America have limited data on HIV prevalence in potential high-risk groups. AIDS case reports are incomplete, reflecting trends in infection of several years ago and are hard to interpret. Data now suggests that the epidemic is increasing in all countries, while governments are doing less.
- More than 1.7 million people in Latin America, of them 36% women, are infected with the AIDS virus, according to a report of Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO).
- "In the region, there are currently 610,000 women living with HIV," the report adds.
- Likewise, it says in 2004, 95,000 people died as a consequence of AIDS in Latin America and 240,000 were affected.
- Although more than a third of the total infected with AIDS in the region live in Brazil, "it (Brazil) continues to be a reference point among all the developing countries," the report said.
- Through the national health system, Brazil continues to offer access to anti-retroviral drugs for all of the people who live with HIV. As a result, the life expectancy of the patients infected with HIV has increased spectacularly," the study said.
- The Caribbean, where 2.4% of the population (some 500,000 people) are carriers of HIV, has the highest infection rate in the world after Africa.
Forgotten Populations
In most countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean for which information is available, the highest rates of HIV infection are found in sub-populations of people whose behaviors leaves them extremely vulnerable to contracting the virus. These sub-populations include men who have sex with other men, men and women who inject drugs, prisoners, street children and other marginalized groups, including some ethnic minorities. Youth, whose sexuality is often ignored in planning prevention and care services, can also be considered to be at higher than average risk of HIV infection. In many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, there is no information at all about infection levels or risk behaviors in sub-populations especially vulnerable to HIV infection.
This is unlikely to be because such risk behavior does not exist. It is, rather, because it has been overlooked, deliberately or otherwise. Homosexual behavior is illegal in many countries of the Region and injecting drug use is illegal in all of them. Besides being illegal, these behaviors are widely frowned on and frequently denied, sometimes even by the people who engage in them.
Because members of sub-populations with high risk behavior are also part of the wider population, the behaviors that expose them to HIV infection may also eventually expose the men and women with whom they interact, even when those men and women do not share the risk behavior. Societies should therefore be driven by self interest -- as well as by moral obligation - to provide information and services that meet the needs of sub-populations at high risk of contracting or passing on HIV.
In most countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean for which information is available, the highest rates of HIV infection are found in sub-populations of people whose behaviors leaves them extremely vulnerable to contracting the virus. These sub-populations include men who have sex with other men, men and women who inject drugs, prisoners, street children and other marginalized groups, including some ethnic minorities. Youth, whose sexuality is often ignored in planning prevention and care services, can also be considered to be at higher than average risk of HIV infection. In many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, there is no information at all about infection levels or risk behaviors in sub-populations especially vulnerable to HIV infection.
This is unlikely to be because such risk behavior does not exist. It is, rather, because it has been overlooked, deliberately or otherwise. Homosexual behavior is illegal in many countries of the Region and injecting drug use is illegal in all of them. Besides being illegal, these behaviors are widely frowned on and frequently denied, sometimes even by the people who engage in them.
Because members of sub-populations with high risk behavior are also part of the wider population, the behaviors that expose them to HIV infection may also eventually expose the men and women with whom they interact, even when those men and women do not share the risk behavior. Societies should therefore be driven by self interest -- as well as by moral obligation - to provide information and services that meet the needs of sub-populations at high risk of contracting or passing on HIV.
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