EDITORIAL - No room for complacency

The local face of the AIDS threat, the woman we knew as Sarah Jane Salazar, died in 2000. After her death the public seemed to lose interest in the AIDS problem. This could have been partly due to Sarah Jane’s behavior even after learning that she had the deadly disease. At 21, two years into her work as a public educator for AIDS and HIV, she took a 16-year-old lover and had a baby with him. Sarah Jane’s descent into despondency landed her in a mental institution in her final days. At 25 she was dead.

The loss of public interest could also be due to what health experts describe as a "low and slow" HIV infection rate in the country. The first HIV case was detected here in 1984. As of last September, the government had officially recorded 2,354 HIV cases. Unofficial estimates are much higher, ranging from 9,000 up to 30,000.

Those figures are still low compared to those in neighboring countries such as China and Vietnam, where the drug problem has contributed to the spread of the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus. But the Philippines cannot afford to be complacent. Health experts estimate that up to 25 million people have been infected with HIV around the world. Globalization and the lack of foolproof cures have contributed to the continuing spread of the disease.

In the Philippines, health experts fear that the problem is being underreported because of the stigma attached to the disease. Sarah Jane contributed to a better understanding of AIDS but also aggravated the stigma attached to it. Health experts have noted that many infected parents keep their problem a secret even from their children to save the kids from ostracism and discrimination.

Poverty, illiteracy and lack of access to health services and information about the disease have been blamed for the alarming spread of AIDS in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. Poverty cannot be eradicated overnight, but the Philippines can improve health and education services to reduce the risk of the spread of HIV. As the country joins the international community in marking World AIDS Day today, there cannot be room for complacency in fighting a killer disease.