AIDS: Risk Mitigation or Risk Elimination?

The current government sponsored program on AIDS in South Africa seeks to mitigate the risk of HIV infections and AIDS by encouraging the use of condoms. Though well-funded and quite visible, it is a simplistic, ineffective campaign, and research has shown the program to have actually resulted in greater numbers of young people having sex.

Spending a week in the Orlando East township within Soweto, outside of Johannesburg, conducting video interviews with pre-teens, teens, and young adults, surfaced several factors that influence sexual attitudes and behavior, including those in the diagram below. SAHAC, the Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Collaboration, is testing a risk elimination campaign meant to reduce the incidence of HIV infection by 50% within pre-teens and teens. It’s message: “wait just until marriage; enjoy sex just with your partner.”

Is it really all about comfort?

For years I have been pondering the question, "What does it take to move people to action in light of the significant needs of others?"

Is it really all about comfort and the avoidance of pain and suffering?
It is comfortable:
- to keep busy enough to have no time to reflect or consider the plight of others
- to live in my own little world, safe from the pain of others
- to attend to my needs (i.e. comfort) and with any extra time to my family
- to avoid exposure to those suffering
- to not try to relate to and understand others lacking comfort
- to convince myself that it is too hard to help others
- to think that the significant needs of others are so overwhelming
- to pretend that there is nothing I can do that could possibly make a difference
- to just not care about others and their sufferings