FFS, both of you are arguing about things that are already in existence. Welch, you're totally correct that there are massive barriers to condom use and just throwing more condoms at it won't fix it by itself. But generalising from Live Aid is about as dumb as generalising from Tarzan movies. The HIV epidemic is worst in relatively wealthy and stable countries like Botswana and here in South Africa -the assumption that they, or the "area" in general, is unable to manufacture or import condoms is silly. Many governments have their own condom distribution programs, and the poorer countries like Malawi are getting them from NGOs. We're not talking about airdropping food into the Sahel here.welch wrote:Scented Nectar wrote:welch wrote:[...]Scented Nectar wrote:[...] They could easily set up, if not factories, then simply mass imports of condoms along with teaching how and when to use them and when not to use them (eg; wants to have children with spouse).welch wrote: [...]
As far as the factories thing? Um, do you have any idea of what even a small factory making generic widgets requires, much less one making medical products with high tolerance requirements requires? That's assuming you have the rest of the infrastructure in place. You may have noticed that rather a few of the countries in the areas we are talking about are kind if fucked in the infrastructure
You also keep insisting that if we just tell people about condoms, TA DA. Well, given the amount of money and time spent doing that, I can safely say that no, just telling people about how awesome condoms are is not the solution you think it is. Again, you can't even make that work HERE, where the majority of the population doesn't assume that european doctors are lying to them. Your method doesn't work the way you think it does in as close to an ideal situation as you will ever get, and yet you insist that if we just keep doing that, well, it'll work.
I understand the relationship between my head and a brick wall. I know which one will win.
As far as mass imports of condoms working, there's so much naiveté in that statement that i can only conclude you literally know nothing about the entire continent beyond the last "tarzan" movie you watched. Just dumping a bunch of stuff in a place doesn't work. YOu still need infrastructure and all the other inconvenient bits.
Fuck, we tried that with FOOD in the 80s. Remember that? Live Aid? We are the World? Shipped a fuck ton of food to the area. How well did that work out? Not fucking very.
SN also has a point in that circumcision campaigns could easily backfire by creating a false confidence. Since we're not living in an ideal world, we can't assume that people won't use it as an excuse to continue with risky sex. Like this notorious Ugandan circumcision poster suggests.
http://www.jhuccp.org/sites/all/files/S ... dscape.JPG
BTW, coming as a bit of a surprise to researchers, the only country in the region that has seen a substantial decline in HIV prevalence recently is Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe: an HIV prevention success story