Monday, July 9, 2012

Complacency

Complacency

Dr Graham Brown, the president of the Australian Federation of AIDS organisations, says safe sex messages have lost some of their momentum since the days when HIV first emerged.

"I think the momentum around condoms and negotiating sex - being up front and being able to disclose to each other STIs or HIV and then making decisions around that - I think we've got a long way to go to try and break down some of those sorts of barriers," he said.

He says there has also been research into whether people are less concerned about HIV because improved treatments mean the virus rarely develops into AIDS in Australia.

"It's probably not so much people feeling optimistic, but perhaps a little less pessimistic is probably a better way of putting it," he said.

"There's not a clear indication that that's what's driven increases in risk behaviours per se, but what it comes down to is people perhaps not as concerned, but certainly there's not a lot of evidence of complacency."

Recently the spread of HIV among heterosexual people has been in the media spotlight because of the case of HIV-positive circus performer Godfrey Zaburoni, who has been accused of knowingly putting at least 12 women at risk through unprotected sex.

Dr Brown says tackling perceptions of the virus in the heterosexual community presents another set of challenges.

"The heterosexual community has not necessarily gone through the same cultural shifts and changes that a lot of the other communities affected with HIV have gone through," he said.

"There's a whole range of communities that have taken on and changed cultural norms. That's not necessarily happened to the same extent within the general community."

But Melbourne's Sexual Health Centre director Christopher Fairley does not believe people have become complacent about safe sex.

"I don't think the studies show there's been a dramatic decline in condom use over time," he said.

"In fact, among gay men with casual partners, condom use has remained relatively high. It's just that with gay men, syphilis is transmitted through oral sex when condoms aren't used.

"So it's not always just unprotected sex that passes on syphilis."

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