A/N: Below is my final essay for my online AIDS Course at Coursera. I completed the said course with distinction (hurrah!), with a final grade that I find to be acceptable. What is most important for me, though, are the things I've learned about HIV/AIDS. The final essay was to be a collection of 5 statements about HIV/AIDS that I found to be significant. Here they are.
The weeks I spent on the AIDS Course at Coursera has strengthened my resolve
as a health care practitioner and an advocate for reproductive health. Throughout
the course, I have tried to create parallelisms between the international
context of the disease, and the local situation in the Philippines, which still
has an escalating number of HIV infection[i]. Thus some statements that
I have chosen are in line with the Philippine context.
I have chosen five statements that summarize the most important things I have
learned in relation to its significance to my work.
1. “We live in a society that chooses
not to talk about sex, let alone educate the kids (about) what engaging in sex
entails, good and bad…I believe that young people are fully aware that HIV
exists. I also believe they know nothing about it at all.” – Angelo Esperanzate,
AIDS Society of the Philippines[ii]
This sums up the status of the Philippine society’s outlook on
HIV/AIDS, exposing the vulnerability of the generally sexually-active but
sexuality-ignorant youth. This
statement is important to me because of my belief that resolving issues on
reproductive health, which includes HIV/AIDS, are a play of biological and
societal factors. The biological factors that make HIV/AIDS such a devastating
disease are continuously being addressed – the pathogenesis is being explored,
vaccines are in development, biomedical preventions are being studied,
utilized, and improved. However, I believe that HIV/AIDS will never be
eradicated if primary levels of protection are not strongly instituted:
preventing people from ever contacting AIDS through lessening risk-taking
behaviors, especially unsafe sexual intercourse. This can be done through
proper counseling and education, which will be very difficult, if not
impossible, in a culture where the norm of keeping mum about all things sexual.
The twisted culture of conservatism is rendering people ignorant about
protecting themselves from the disease.
2.
“Because it inserts its genetic material into the chromosome,
HIV cannot be eradicated without killing every infected cell.” - Eric Hunter,
MD, Professor of Microbiology & Immunology, Co-Director, Emory CFAR[iii]
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| Image from aids.gov |
I am one who appreciates the
fantastically terrible processes of how diseases wreck havoc in the body, which
is why this is striking to me. As explained by Dr. Hunter in his lecture, HIV
primarily targets CD4 T-helper cells (which Dr. Hagen calls “generals” and
“conductors” of the immune system[iv]), thus rendering the
immune system incapable of efficiently addressing other threats to healthii.
This statement is a summary of how HIV/AIDS is a double-edge sword – allowing
the disease to escalate means CD4 cells will die, but to achieve functional
cure for HIV (or suppress viral load), infected CD4 cells would still have to
be eradicated.
This statement is significant to me
because it is a challenge to those who wish to eliminate the epidemic: HIV is a
terribly intelligent disease – your move, science.
And the answer is “bring it on”.
3. “HPTN 052 is a game changer.” –
Michael Sidibe, Executive director, UNAIDS.[v]
Dr. del Rio’s lecture about Treatment as Prevention (TasP)
presented the HPTN 052 study, which unearthed wonderful results in terms of
biomedical HIV prevention: total relative reduction of HIV transmission through
TasP is 96%.iV The result yielded is incredible. This
statement is significant because it reinforces one of the most important thing
that I have learned in the AIDS course – that a Person Living with HIV (PLHIV)
need not be feared, that with proper treatment, these people can line
relatively normal lives and the chances of passing the disease to others is
greatly diminished.
It is a statement that, in my opinion, brings hope to PLHIV and those
who advocate with and for them.
For those interested to read up on the study, look it up here.
4. “The Body of Christ has AIDS.” – Denise Ackerman, woman
theologian.[vi]
Ackerman’s statement is a bold,
wonderful dare to the conservative views of some religions factions in dealing
with HIV/AIDS and the discriminatory tone some religious groups took in the
earlier stage of the epidemic. It is also an epitome of how religion can be a
driving force for eradicating HIV/AIDS. In Dr. Blevins’s lecture, he mentioned
that religion can either promote an environment for the spread of HIV or for stopping
the infection in its tracks.vi This is one of the most significant statements
for me because it is generally applicable to my country.
The Philippines the only Catholic
nation in Southeast Asia, and the new cases of HIV infection are rising. Despite
the clause for the separation of Church and State[vii], the Roman Catholic Church still
has indirect power in terms of policy-making and has exercised this power to
prevent the Legislative from passing bills that would provide comprehensive
reproductive and sexual health education and services (although after years of
battle the Reproductive Health Law was passed last year). Religion stands against
informing the public regarding safer sex practices beyond abstinence. This is
one of the reasons seen by reproductive health advocates for the increasing HIV
infections.
This statement is the banner of any
activist-advocate wishing to turn the tides and utilize religion to fight
against the HIV epidemic.
5. “Live HIV Neutral”. – The Stigma
Project[viii]
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| Image from The Stigma Project |
The final statement is from the Facebook page of The Stigma
Project, and it reminds me of something I’ve heard a long time ago: that we are
all living with HIV, regardless of our sero-status. HIV is a societal disease
as much as it is a biological one. This short-but-powerful statement is
important because of its double meaning: that PLHIV can live as normal as
possible (thus “neutral”) and for those with sero-negative status to let go of
discrimination and see HIV/AIDS from an objective and scientific position,
instead of a condemning one (again, being “neutral”)
To conclude, AIDS is a muti-faceted disease
which affects the society as much as it affects society. Information is vital
to combating this epidemic and one must look at the information presented with
objective eyes an open mind and an understanding heart.
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