ARE CONDOMS THE PANACEA FOR AIDS ?

World AIDS Day was celebrated on 2nd December, 2006. I am of the opinion that the strategy presently adopted by various NGOs and the governments is not free from the avoidable pitfalls mostly seen in such campaigns. The advertisement campaigns run by them in both print and electronic media are merely promoting free sex and promiscuity. We are telling the young and the impressionable minds what should not be told. Imagine an automatic condom vending machine installed in Hostel campus with the message to carry condoms. What does it mean? Do we ask the girls and the boys to lead a care-free life with little bearing on the moral side?
In fact, AIDS is one of such diseases which embrace you only if you invite it whole-heartedly. The best way, therefore, should have been encouraging the people to lead a morally upright life rather than telling them to indulge in free-sex using protective measures. This is a wrong way of advising the people. This might only boost the top-line and the bottom line of the condom manufacturers and the marketers.

There are other ways to fight this disease rather than emphasizing only on condoms. Condoms are not eh ultimate remedy to prevent AIDS. For instance let us take the success story of the African countries where AIDS was posing a major threat to their very existence. The tiny African country Uganda took on the dreaded disease by its horns. From the front-runner in AIDS in the 1980s today this country could control the incurable disease not by unbridled selling condoms alone but by promoting the morality of the citizens. Under the visionary leadership of the Ugandan President Mr. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni the country successfully attacked AIDS.

The African Development Forum had formed an ABC Plan for the eradication (?) AIDS.

A for ABSTINENCE from un-controlled Sex;

B for BE FAITHFUL; and

C for CONDOMS.

With the help of the Christian and Islamic religious leaders, he fought AIDS. The fight veered around the morality of the people. . The president described AIDS as GOOD DISEASE because it is neither an air-borne disease nor through mere touch or a hand-shake. It goes to only those people who invite it whole heartedly. Of course there may be exceptions.

Therefore, there is also a more appropriate way of fighting this dreaded disease, which still eludes cure. Let us promote the A, B and C and not C alone. The people must be told to follow a life conforming to strict morality and not indulge in free sex in a casual manner. BECAUSE CONDOMS ARE NOT A PANACEA TO CURE AIDS.

Let us fight AIDS with our heads high and the body and mind clean.