Brian
West Scot’s corner
ATTENTION!
THIS IS A GOVERNMENT CAMPAIGN
The government is launching a new campaign to make us pay
more attention to government campaigns. They will probably also appoint a
listening-to-government-campaigns minister to oversee it. This hasn’t
happened quite yet, although following the appointment of a ‘fitness
minister’ because we failed to pay attention to their last anti-fat
campaign, we can assume something like this will happen before half the population
becomes clinically obese by the year 2015.
The problem is, like all other failed health and sexual health campaigns,
we are the ones who are wrong. We are not getting the message. We are irresponsibly
ignoring it. It couldn’t, of course, be that the message is of no relevance
to us. Or that the messengers are not doing a good job. Perish the thought.
Or even that it is not more messages that we need, but more support.
Most people live their daily lives bombarded by health messages: eat sensibly,
five pieces of fruit or veg a day, don’t smoke, exercise more. But we
have a habit of not paying attention to this advice. The safer sex message
is out there, supposedly; wear condoms, protect and survive. But we don’t,
always.
Anyone living with HIV who knows their status knows they are a source of possible
infection. We don’t need a message to tell us that. We know there are
other sexually transmitted infections out there that can affect viral load.
We’ve got that message. The message we haven’t really seen yet
is the one that tells us exactly how we can keep the idealistic ‘no
transfer of bodily fluids’ sex life going for years and years and years.
Decades even.
HIV is 25 years old, and I have known my HIV status for 21. When the ‘wear
a condom’ message started among gay men in the early 80s, many of us
thought it was a temporary phenomenon until we came up with something better.
It may seem strange to a younger generation, but condoms were alien to us
until our friends and partners started to drop down dead like flies. We were
wrong; we’ll be using condoms for years to come. So how are we supposed
to do that?
No
one has told us. Trouble is, no one expected to have a population that would
make it to the Shady Pines HIV Retirement Home. A Danish presentation at the
Toronto World Aids Conference said life expectancy for people with HIV had
improved greatly since the drugs came along, and a 25-year-old diagnosed with
HIV now can expect to live till they are 65. So what messages do we give to
this 25-year-old? I’ve never seen a message that tells me how to keep
safer sex going for 40 years. No point telling me that condoms are cool, or
that all the hottest guys wear them. They’re not cool. They’re
a necessary nuisance; part of our everyday sex life that we have to get used
to. That’s it. Most safer sex messages nowadays don’t make the
mistake of trying to oversell the glory of condom use. They just say they
are a good thing. They tell us how to use them.
Thanks. But is that it? If it is, then it’s not enough. Historically,
heterosexuals (for whom one assumes condoms were originally invented) didn’t
habitually use condoms all their active lives. They used them infrequently
to avoid pregnancy. We are set targets never expected of anyone else before.
We are to use a contraceptive device for non-contraceptive means for far longer
than anyone imagined. The messages have to change if we are to make sure we
do not infect anyone else.
And to be honest, most safer sex messages are about other people, not us.
There’s nothing wrong with altruistic concern about keeping other people
infection free, but what about us? HIV prevention money is still predominantly
about us not doing something bad to anyone else. There’s not enough
about what we can get out of it, what we can do for ourselves. But that’s
not so easy. We probably need less campaigning and far more support in making
sensible decisions on a daily basis over a long period of time. And generally
that sort of long-term support is just not there. Many support centres for
people living with HIV have closed, or had services cut back over the years.
Support is more complicated than advice and it’s not as cool as a campaign.
It involves more consultation with people living with HIV and more focused
work with us.
People probably don’t change their lifestyles due to government campaigns;
they do it by talking with friends, bouncing ideas off each other and going
to support groups. We’re more likely to change when we’re actively
involved in an initiative. So please, let’s have fewer campaigns and
more local support for people living with HIV. That doesn’t mean I want
to see a government minister appointed for support group activities. If we
carry on at this rate the entire Labour party will be ministers. Maybe that’s
the campaign plan.
