Cape Town’s health services chief says that young gay people are taking more risks with unsafe sex than before, reports the Cape Times.
According to the paper, Ivan Toms – executive director of health services for the city – made the comment in a talk at a meeting of the Africa Genome Education Institute’s Biotechnology and Health Economics Working Group of South Africa on Monday.
Toms said that the emphasis on safe sex and the dangers of HIV/Aids in the gay community seems to be slipping, saying that “young, crazy people are starting to play young, crazy risk games.”
He blamed the situation on the belief among many younger gay men that because of the perceived success of anti-retrovirals, Aids is no longer seen as a death sentence. He said that young people tend to think of the disease as a chronic and easily manageable one.
While Toms emphasised the fact that HIV/Aids epidemic in South Africa remains a primarily heterosexual phenomenon, he noted that research that is being undertaken by the Human Sciences Research Council – which aims to assess the rate of HIV infection in homosexuals in the country – appears to show that the disease is “becoming a really serious problem in the gay community as well.”
According to Toms, the HIV prevalence rate among the adult population (15 to 49) in South Africa was between 18 percent and 19 percent in 2005.
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give them more freedom. As someone who is young, Gay and at one time rather premiscouse…
One of the main reasons young people that i know..
engage in un-protected sex is because of supression…
more and more, every day we hear about how
gays cant do this and cant do that…
they’re the cause of this and the cause of that
and
Rebellion has long been associated with the youth
and as we as Gays are only now having our voices heard.. we are all young, as a people..
so…
if you want gay kids to play it safe..
dont fight them, embrace them…
And get those narrow minded straight supremists
out of the way…
because nothing is gonna happen in the Unfair and Un-equal New fucking South Africa
because the fact is..
Its isnt a better SA when the same games are being played, 10 years after its apparant Liberalisation…
ps.Yes i am pissed off with this Nation..
its made up of fucking Hypocrytes