Monkey, Man, and Ostrich (By Dr Hany El-Banna)

How can a medical problem become a cultural phenomenon and what is the relationship between both? Which started first and how can we deal with both?

In the case of HIV and AIDS its inception is debatable because we always blame the monkey. But the monkey is innocent: either we injected him with HIV or he was carrying it and transmitted it to a human being.  Whatever the origins of HIV, the monkey is not responsible for our sexual and drug addictive behaviours, which are found to be the prime causes of HIV transmission. 

I believe the monkey is innocent.

Let us discuss new cultural attitudes of the highly developed society that we are living in at the moment. The UN is developing what we call the ABC approach: A stands for ‘Abstinence’, B for ‘Be Faithful’ and C for ‘Correct and Consistent Use of Condoms’. Human attitudes towards sexual behaviour speeded up the transmission of the virus from generation to generation and from one gender to another.
The highly civilised culture reflects free sex for all with a partner who is from the same or different gender, and includes sex workers. The sidelining of the family issue and religious values and the stigma affecting the non-sexually active members of society breaks all the barriers and boundaries that builds the family which can build a stable society. The freedom of sexual behaviour and the availability of it for pre-aged school children is raising another alarm: inexperienced young girls and boys might have been contracting HIV and transmitting it without knowing. Furthermore, the acceptance of same-sex sexual practices as a part of our life becomes’ another source of transmission for HIV.

Moving out of sexual behaviour (which is debatable with a strong right according to where we are) we move onto drugs and addiction which constitutes a change of attitudes towards injected drug use as a whole. People do not discuss the issue of addiction but discuss the issue of the needle – and this is a shift in the mindset of a newly developing moral society value which has taken away all the moral teachings of religions that were brought to humanity to protect society.
When we look at all these factors which change the mindset of the people and encourage a drastic change in human behaviour, we find that this has led to the creation of a new culture which is facilitating the spread of the virus. 

We are left with one option: to try to protect our society from the devastating impact of the spread of HIV. The solution is to create another culture that can protect society from infancy and childhood to see an end to this ill (cultural) behaviour of the human race.

It will take some time - at least one generation - to bring about a second generation that understands the moral societal value that can protect the family unit and bring forth the future citizens of society who believe that citizens within the family is the most importance asset any nation can have. So while we are treating and looking after the people who are living with HIV, we need to build up this new culture which protects future generations.

At the end of the day we don’t want to become like the ostrich with her head buried in the sand. Rather we would like to face the route causes of the problem courageously: either cut it or change it to save the human race.

I have to admit that the monkey is innocent from the verdict of guilt that he has transmitted HIV to us. Let’s give the monkey his freedom by releasing him from the cage and look to the real causes of HIV.