Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
MCDONALD
RUE* AND her common-law husband do not use condoms when they have sex.
"Who? Mi no use dem t'ing deh," she told The Gleaner.
In the past, however, she has had reason to believe that her partner had been unfaithful and she has never been sure if he uses a condom with other women. She is now pregnant with their fourth child.
"All him do no badda carry no AIDS come gi me!" she said, refusing to say anything more.
Ray, a homosexual, never used condoms during his more active years.
"No. At that time hearing about HIV, it wasn't that plentiful," he told The Gleaner. "So I was only just doing it, doing it, doing it and then say well, yuh know wey ah mean. I never think about ketching anything."
Ray is now HIV-positive and has also contracted syphilis.
Some 170 people died from AIDS in Jamaica during the January to March quarter this year. One hundred and nine or 64 per cent of them were male, an increase of some 10 per cent compared to the same period last year.
PROMISCUITY
Health experts say promiscuity and attitudes toward condom use of both heterosexual and homosexual males have complicated the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Socialisation, they also say, plays a great role.
A survey conducted by FamilyHealth International Women's Project in 2001 among 12-year- old boys in Jamaica, showed that boys were being pressured by male relatives to be sexually active. The report notes that this is an essential part of being a "man".
Dr. Douglas McDonald, senior medical officer at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital, Kingston, said the socialisation norm leaves men vulnerable to infection.
"They sleep around with other women but also with other men," he says, sometimes without using a condom.
NOT EROTIC
Studies conducted among homosexuals in the United States show that a majority of them view condoms as unreliable and not erotic and interrupting sex. According to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from 1994 to 1997 the proportion of homosexuals reporting having had anal sex increased from 57.6 per cent to 61.2 per cent, while the percentage of those reporting "always" using condoms declined from 69.6 per cent to 60 per cent. The attitudes are, perhaps, not that different in Jamaica.
Ray has had several partners in his time.
"Well, is a great amount. Is a great amount like I can count a few of them that died. After being HIV-positive now I started thinking who I had sex with and a few of them have been dead," he says.
Homosexuals account for some 2.2 per cent of AIDS-related deaths in Jamaica since 1982. Some 22,000 people in Jamaica are HIV positive. Sixty-five per cent of them do not know that they have the virus. Health experts believe that stigma is preventing some people from testing for HIV; they fear being ostracised if they are found to be HIV-positive.
* Names changed for personal reasons
