WHO Said What?

OPEN IMAGE GALLERY

The International AIDS Conference is in full swing in Mexico City and the world is watching as the timing of some unthinkable data from the Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) brings news that previous rates of AIDS, especially among gay men have been grossly underreported – by as much as 40%.

According to

a recent Bloomberg article, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, addressing the conference during the opening ceremonies, said that men who have sex with men still make up a high-risk group for AIDS, that discrimination against them must end, and that countries must employ prevention programs.

The head of the World Health Organization's (WHO) unit in China, Margaret Chan said that these setbacks must be acknowledged by health officials in all nations (including the U.S.). According to the CDC, in the last 15 years, in the U.S. alone, the rate of infections among gay men have risen 75%.

Could this have anything to do with the political climate of the last decade? Could this have anything to do with funding for domestic prevention programs being gutted? It's amazing how worked up and effectively communicative people can be about some rotten tomatoes, but how ignorant and silent we all insist upon remaining about AIDS, especially when it comes to our own.

"We need to engage them, we need to take care of them, we should not forget about them," Chan said, referring to the homosexual community worldwide.