for the first time...

i'm going to blog my homework...

After watching a documentry...

A CLOSER WALK - HIV, AIDS

The documentry cover serveral high risk segments of society...

CHILDREN, POOR, WOMEN, YOUTH


Assignment
Pick 1 segment and use it as qualitative research evidence of the major challenge to changing risky behaviour that results in contracting and spreading HIV/AIDS
- list reasons and evidence in support of argument
- must change this behaviour because....

The documentry opened with a young Afican child, so frail, lying is a hospital bed. His mother loking on helplessly as the doctor flatly explain this boy's plight. " There is little we can do for him, except make him comfortable." and there are 10s of thosands of children just like him..

There were so many hings that resonated during my 1 hour viewing, 1 doctor explained this is a completely preventable disease, and yet it has taken millions of lives in Africa alone. It isnot a gay problem, not an African problem. It is a NATIONAL problem, there is medicine to prevent new borns from getting HIV during birth, and yet 100,00 children are born with HIV each year. it is all COMPLETELY PREVENTABLE.

risky behaviour? i believe that all but youth have contracted HIV by circumstance. In any event, its always the poor, the opressed and the helpless that are the hardest hit, and though un derserving bares the brunt.

or could it be another factor all together, education? or money?

women? maybe it is how they are not empowered to make choices. In this documentary, they piece a scenario.

In Indian culture you never amount to anything if you do not marry, so man marries woman despite the fact that he knows he has AIDS. He trys to protect the girl but she is pressured to bare a child. If not he will marry a second wife and she will be outcasted. Her options are such, and most of the time they rather get infected.

This is a fucking screwed up whole.

you only have access, if you have the right connection. By connections I mean the green stuff. Its the only thing that speaks volumes.

..................................................


The lack of education about AIDS to the high risk segment of society is perpetuating the spread of HIV. The lack of education stems from the lack of salience of AIDS in the media and the government. Possibly government does not want to admit that there is a problem and thus does little to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. This results in a cycle of ignorance in society and that disempowers those at risk. This is most evident in the segment on poor women in A Closer Walk.

Reasons
In the scenario given by one of the health worker

-Women are given little other alternative than contracting HIV
-They are ill-informed about the consequences of contracting HIV, unable to accurately weigh the pros and cons of the decisions they make.
-Women are blamed by the family as the cause of the disease, even though it is not true
-They seem unaware that though they will contract HIV, that their children do not have to do so.
- the facility that they are housed in is actually for communicable diseases, there is no facility dedicated to helping people with HIV and AIDS.
- these people have become destitude once they are found to have AIDS because peoplae are uneducated and afraid that they will contract AIDS too.

Why must this behaviour be changed?-It can prevent women and children from getting HIV unnessesarily
-There does not need to be a stigma attached to HIV and education about how it it transmitted can help change that
- create a more supportive environment for HIVpatients, more family support.
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