Wednesday, August 17, 2005

1 down, 1 to go

just finished the gender audit report of philnet which without a hint of modesty, i said i could finish in two days. apparently, it took longer than that, much longer actually. blame my lethargic state i was in for quite some time. good to get back on my feet now. not that i want to but i am compelled to because the presentation is set tomorrow at 3 pm. and i've still one more to do.

as i write this post i got this YM from my colleague, "Excellent! We can engage PhilNet in an animated discussion". she just received the report i emailed to her. i asked for comments and some points she might want to add and this is what i got. i'll take it to mean that i've to brace myself for tomorrow's presentation.

i missed today's launching of a module/book on sexuality something... at UP-CWS. there's a long list of presentors i was told and the program would last from 1 to 5 pm. i thought i would not be able to flee when i wanted to, just like what i did this morning at pahra/tfd/mag forum. i opted not to go and gave up the complimentary copy of the module/book.

part of the program would be a discussion on HIV. yesterday, our board president joined our meeting to explore possiblities of wise act's involvement in HIV awareness campaign, which is going to be under my helm. yaikks, first it was VAW, now it's HIV.

we were told yesterday that WHO is very much interested on studying the philippine experience in preventing spread of HIV-AIDS in the country. ours is a low-risk country, only 2230 cases reported nationwide with a projection that it could soar to 10,000, but even that is negligible compared to the 80 million population. the projection was actually made some time back and apparently we didn't reach the target. (target?)

the truth is that, our board president said, there is nothing to learn as far preventive measures are concerned because the philippines has not really done much except that we were one of the first to pass a law pertaining to HIV which contains a provision that prohibits mandatory HIV testing, and also we set up HIV centers that would take care or handle persons living with HIV. the politically correct term i learned is "persons living with HIV", not HIV victims, not HIV positive. i too learned that HIV is most commonly transmitted through heterosexual sex. so that HIV is a gay thing is just a myth.

those engaged in HIV work are floating the assumption that the philippines has nominal cases of HIV because we, filipinos, are not as promiscuous as other asians and we are not as kinky, and we are not as fond of anal sex. give our religiosity a credit for that. but there is still cause for alarm because values of the youngs are now fast evolving. many youngs of today think multiple sex, simultaneous sex, group sex are okay. also, the high rate of migration is another cause for alarm, 37% of the 2230 reported cases of HIV are OFW's. curious thing, many cases of HIV are also found in coastal communities.

i'll learn more about HIV in due time. meanwhile, back to the other report i have to finish.

1 Comments:

Blogger ikabod said...

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10:04 PM  

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