Thursday, March 6, 2008

No need to know is better

Finally, I managed to locate more details about the survey I was searching for. According to this article, Many S'poreans still ignorant about Aids, in AsiaOne.
The survey, which polled 705 people, was conducted by World Vision in conjunction with its One Life Experience (OLE) exhibition on World AIDS Day last December.
I sense that all the other media/blogs that reported the figures in this survey are mocking at us. Without any other reference point, it sounds like Singaporeans are really terrible not know AIDS/HIV that well. However, ... are we that bad? one third is quite on par with the G7 countries in their more thorough survey. Then, regarding mosquito bites, it is only us since I found this article 3 years back, Filipinos highly misinformed about AIDS: survey (I'm sorry to mention Filipinos here.)
Most Filipinos still believe HIV/AIDS can be transmitted by a mosquito bite or by sharing the food of an infected person, a government survey showed...
Besides the figures, again I want to question the ultimate motives of all these AIDS/HIV related organisations. Is their top most priority to stop the spread? Or is it to help the infected ones to live a normal life?

To stop the spread, some of those myths are good so that people can be more careful. It may not transmit throug kissing, but here, kissing is kissing, period. Practically, kissing doesn't usually stop at kissing. Also, medically, kissing with wounded openings in or near the mouth should still allow trasmission of the virus. It may not transmit through mosquito bite. However, if someone who is HIV positive but doesn't know mistakenly suspect that he/she might have been infected by a mosquito and go for a test, then that will make him/her know and be able to take proper step not to unintentionally keep spreading the virus.

In fact, I think we should not need to know so much about AIDS/HIV if we have only one sexual partner, who is our life long spouse, within marriage. Thus, from another angle, the "ignorance" might reflect the high percentage of normal people who don't practice sexual promiscuity.

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