EDITORIAL - HIV explosion a serious challenge to Rama

According to statistics released by the Cebu City Health department, there is a very "alarming" spike in the number of people found positive of the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus in Cebu City.

Compared to just 95 HIV-positive people recorded over a 20-year period from 1989 to 2009, a total of 150 were recorded to have the virus that causes the fatal and incurable disease called AIDS, or Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome, in just six months from January to June this year.

In what can only be considered as a double-whammy, the alarming spike in recorded HIV cases was traced to drug abuse, with most of the victims admitting to officials that they have been sharing needles with other addicts.

Yet the statistics were only culled from available recorded data and do not accurately project a more precise picture of the twin problems. Assuming, just for the sake of context, that for every recorded case, there is one that goes unrecorded, then we are truly in a great bind.

It is bad enough that HIV-AIDS nows seems to have gained a real toe-hold in Cebu City, it is worse when the prevailing mode of acquiring or transmitting the virus is by means of something criminal, as in drug abuse.

There are two other ways in addition to drug use where one can acquire or transmit the deadly HIV virus -- through the exchange of body fluids, usually through sex, and through blood transfusion.

Of the three ways to get the virus, drug abuse poses the greatest concern because even without the threat of disease, drug abuse by itself constitutes many other problems, not the least of which is its close association with the commission of crimes.

The release of these alarming statistics also necessarily raises a red flag that should not be hard to miss by everyone concerned. And it poses a serious challenge to the administration of new Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama.