When Red AIDS becomes PINK

I was invited by the AIDS Society of the Philippines to present my organization’s experience in implementing an innovative approach to reach the men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) for HIV prevention during the 9th National AIDS Convention held at SEAMEO INNOTECH in Quezon City on October 23-24,2008. Having implemented a model project, I presented “LIVE CHAT”: Online Education Counseling for MSM. This project with support from ASP-UNFPA and the Friends of WAVES in Northern Ireland used the internet, particularly live chatting to interact, share information, counsel or refer chatters to appropriate reproductive health services such as STI diagnosis/treatment and HIV testing. Under Session Six, my presentation came after Dr. Enrique Tayags’, the head of the DOH National Epidemiology Center and Dr. Jose Narciso Melchor Sescon, president of ASP.

Well, this blog is not really about my presentation. I’d like to talk about Dr. Tayag’s presentation. His task was to answer the question “Why Philippines needs to intensify MSM programs?”. To get his message accross, he flashed a couple of slides showing the data from the AIDS registry. What was startling about his data was the sharp increase of confirned HIV infection among MSM for the last three years. The latest cases are mostly MSM which constitute 69% of the total HIV infections since 2005. This trend comes as a big surprise because in the past, MSM just represented less than 30% of the total recorded cases. If this trend continues, it looks like MSM will dominantly characterize the HIV epidemic in the Philippines in few years time. And Dr. Tayag warns that this could be dangerous because of the broad inclusion of the MSM population. While there are so many “obvious” MSMs - the effeminates and the cross dressers, there are an unaccounted number (probbly double) of “discreet” MSMs - those who look and act so manly. The latter is difficult to reach for education because we don’t know who they are and their sexual activities are done so covertly as well.

With the current absence or very minimal effort and investment for MSM-targeted interventions, there is a big possibility that the color RED of AIDS campaign will turn PINK (supposed to mean here gay) in the coming years.