LGBT open to help curb AIDS menace

CEBU, Philippines - The Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender (LGBT) community in Cebu is open to work with the government to help mitigate the continuous increase of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) cases in the country.

 Last Tuesday night, the 2012 AIDS global results report of the United Nations showed that despite other countries having successfully decreased the number of AIDS cases in their communities, the Philippines’ AIDS cases have alarmingly increased by 25 percent.

Department of Health Assistant Secretary Eric Tayag, in an interview with ABS-CBN Manila after the report was released, said that there are a number of causes to which they see the increase should be attributed to, these include social media sites and online dating.

These reasons have also led to more MSM (men who have sex with men) instances which are two of the primary causes in the rise of AIDS cases.

 He said that the use of contaminated syringe of injections by drug dependents is also another reason. With this, Tayag said that they are hoping to partner with the LGBT community to further strengthen their efforts to bring down the AIDS cases in the country.

The LGBT community in Cebu is also willing to partner with DOH as they too see the dramatic increase in the cases.

 Ladlad Party-list spokesperson in Cebu, Orly Cajegas, said that it is important that the community takes part in resolving the concern.

“This indeed is an alarming rise of the HIV-related incidence on the national scale. Although MSM is just one of the many factors considered to have caused the rise, still the numbers don’t lie.”

Cajegas said they are willing to partner with DOH in any way they can to help curb the problem.

“It’s about time we drilled down into the heart of the matter and do drastic measures, like reinforcing sex education vis-a-vis sexually transmitted diseases.”

According to the recent record of DOH, there are nine HIV or AIDS cases reported everyday for this year comparing to 12 years ago when there was only one case for every three days.

DOH-7 Officer-in-charge of the local health support division Dr. Juditha Tawatao said that in Cebu, they have noticed the increase from last year which have continued until 2012.

The exact numbers were not provided since the officers handling AIDS cases in the province was in Manila for conference.— (FREEMAN)