The AIDS cover-up

Health

By David Robie

FROM Papeete’s Piano Bar to the Hotel Papua in Port Moresby the message is much the same: AIDS is a death-dealing virus that is a scourge for Western and palagi gay communities.

Or intravenous drug users. It’s no real problem for Pacific Islanders, Wrong.

Newspapers treat AIDS sufferers in Papua New Guinea, where most Pacific cases in an independent island nation have been identified, in sensationalist style. They are outcasts, Lepers, Scare tactics, Wrong again.

These glib, simplistic attitudes are ris ky for South Pacific communicators, warn health and population workers.

One of the biggest tasks for educators in the region is to dispel the myths about AIDS and to persuade governments to face up to the realities.

Some Pacific governments frequently try to cover up the seriousness of the problem because it “creates a bad image and damages tourism so AIDS is brushed under the carpet”.

But the facts are there; Like it or not, AIDS is well established in the Pacific.

And, apart from the large pool of poten tial HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) carriers among islanders living in Australia, France, New Zealand and the United States, there are believed to be hundreds with HIV already in Pacific nations.

According to World Health Organisa tion figures presented at last month’s re gional seminar on new perspectives in population communication in Auckland, full AIDS cases have now been reported in five Pacific island nations or territories Fiji 2, French Polynesia 8, New Cale donia 8, Papua New Guinea 13 and Tonga 1.

However, perhaps more revealing is that more than 70 HIV infection cases have been reported in French Polynesia, more than 40 in New Caledonia, 30 in Papua New Guinea, 12 in Guam, and

less than five each in the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Tonga. Other unreported HIV cases are believed to be present in other Paci fic nations and among the Pacific islan der communities in metropolitan coun tries.

Several of the population conference delegates visited the NZ AIDS Founda tion headquarters in Auckland and met Pacific Islands and Maori community workers. They pledged to make a grea ter effort to inform Pacific communities about the virus and its implications for island societies (see box).

Posters on the wall depicted “safe sex” themes. In one, showing two men with a condom, the slogan said: “It takes two to have unsafe sex but only one to pre vent it.” Said another: “It’s your life love carefully!”

“AIDS has this connotation of ‘dying’, ‘sin’, and ‘pollution’,” Jenny Rankin, edi tor of the foundation’s education maga zine Network told the delegates. “There is this distorted image of a group of safe people who do nice things with each other. Outside of this group is another group of nasty people. And the safe peo ple will remain safe providing the nasties are kept outside of the mainstream.”

Rankin condemned the news media’s role in the region for perpetuating myths. “Media has created the wrong im ages.” She added: “AIDS is about living, human need and community. Unless wc can deal with these issues then this virus will kill a lot of people even in the Pacific Islands.”

Rankin appealed to newspapers in the South Pacific to abandon the “fear” stor ies and run articles with real, informa tion about HIV and AIDS. “Let us talk about how to stay safe,” she added. “And how to create support networks.”

Within a week of the seminar joint ly sponsored by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the South

Pacific Commission (SPC) a $lOO,OOO Pacific Islands Aids Trust was launched in New Zealand to provide education among islander communities. The trust will complement the work being done by the national Aids Foundation, which re ceives a $1.5 million annual government grant, and the Te Roopu Tautoko Trust which works with the Maori community.

Frank Wiki, a Te Roopu community worker, agreed with the vital importance of education work: “One Maori infected is one too many.” He recalled: “One man, a Maori, believed HIV was only carried by white gay mem. So as long as he had sex only with other Maoris he would be alright. Unfortunately, this is a widely spread belief.”

The foundation educators appealed to Pacific governments to put more re sources into AIDS education prog rammes.

But HIV or AIDS sufferers are not the only Pacific Islanders to be unfairly

stigmatised, the population conference

was told. On average one tenth of the populations in Pacific nations are dis abled yet they are forgotten and

ignored by national planners.

Cook Islander Fanaura Kingstone, a regional social development adviser, made an impassioned plea for the wel fare of the thousands of “grossly neg lected and deprived” handicapped Paci fic Islanders.

According to her breakdown of the latest national census figures, 554,240 people are disabled in the Pacific Islands states which have a combined population of more than five million. The figures include American Samoa with 3229, Cook Islands (1775), Fiji (17,884), French Polynesia (16,675), Kiribati (6349), New Caledonia (14,536), Niue (328), Papua New Guinea (301,072), Solomon Islands (28,157), Tonga (9453), Vanuatu (14,263) and Western Samoa (15,890).

“The disabled people of the region are at the bottom of the social and economic

pile of their country’s society,” Kingstone

said. □