Philippines Faces AIDS Explosion

Local officials refuse to release funds for condom promotion, forcing existing AIDS programs to cut supplies, services and staff. Some local governments had even passed laws banning condoms from public clinics and hospitals. Schools have also been prohibited from discussing AIDS or condom use with students, the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said. 

BY CARLOS H. CONDE
Bulatlat.com

The Philippines is facing an explosion of new cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, due to the government’s policies that discourage, if not outrightly prohibit, condom use, a human-rights group revealed recently.

These policies are the result of the Philippine government’s “pandering” to religious objections to condom, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released early this month on the AIDS situation in the Philippines.

“The Philippines faces a possible explosion of HIV/AIDS, yet its government actively impedes measures that would prevent this incurable and deadly disease. It does so chiefly by impeding access to condoms,” the report said.

Condom use is widely considered the single most effective method to prevent infection by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The report -- “Unprotected: Sex, Condoms, and the Human Right to Health in the Philippines,” which Human Rights Watch launched in Manila early this month -- points out that while the Philippines shares many of the risk factors of other countries, Filipinos are more vulnerable because 85 percent of them adhere to a religion (Roman Catholicism) “whose leadership objects to the use of condoms for any purpose.”

It accused the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, a devout Catholic, of pandering to the objections of the Catholic Church, citing her move in 2003 to realign funds meant for a contraceptive program by donating it instead to a religious group known for its anti-condom advocacy.

It also said the government failed to support legislation that would have increased access to condoms. It likewise criticized the government’s flawed implementation of a 1998 law passed specifically to counter AIDS.

“False claims”

The administration did not even counter the “false claims” made by the Church and the Vatican against condoms, such as the claim that condoms have tiny holes in them that render them useless in preventing infection, the report said.

Human Rights Watch also documented cases of government officials refusing to buy condom supplies and awarding public contracts to groups that openly campaign against condom use.

In some instances, local officials refuse to release funds for condom promotion, forcing existing AIDS programs to cut supplies, services and staff. Some local governments had even passed local laws banning condoms from public clinics and hospitals. Schools have also been prohibited from discussing AIDS or condom use with students, the report said.

The report also said the government had prosecuted sex workers by using condoms found in their possession as evidence, thus discouraging sex workers from using the prophylactic.

These policies, Human Rights Watch said, violate the internationally recognized human right to health. “The immediate effect of these policies has been to deprive the poorest, most vulnerable members of society of a lifesaving HIV-prevention technology, while leaving relatively unaffected those who can afford private health care,” the report said.

The Philippine government’s official count of HIV infections is only about 10,000 cases, a very low figure considering the population of 84 million. Unfortunately, the government has used this low figure as an excuse for not doing enough to curb AIDS, said Jonathan Cohen, the researcher and author of the report.

Cohen said experts are concerned that once this AIDS explosion occurs, it would spread rapidly because of the government’s complacency.

AIDS and other health issues, let alone the population issue, were not election issues in the Philippines, which held national and local elections recently. “I find that appalling. For a country with serious health and population issues, it is amazing that nobody is talking about these issues,” Cohen said. Bulatlat.com

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