STAY safe and play safe, this is the message from the National AIDS Council Secretariat in Papua New Guinea for the Pacific Games.
With the Pacific Games steaming full speed ahead, the local authorities on sexual health in Port Moresby have predicted an in increase in sexual activity and sexually transmitted infections.
The health department and AIDS Secretariat have set up booths at games venues and are distributing free condoms.
Local newspaper, The National reported AIDS Secretariat manager Angesula Jogamup as saying the chances of HIV and STI infections increasing are very high if people do not use condoms and continue to have unprotected sex.
Even the Games Village has its own supply of condoms. Each bathroom is equipped with a condom dispensing unit.
FASANOC president Joe Rodan said as sportspeople, athletes should spread the gospel of safe sex.
“One of the emblems on the Team Fiji tee-shirts is a HIV/AIDS campaign one. We want our athletes to be role models,” Rodan said.
“Safe sex and preventing HIV/AIDS is everyone’s business. We want our athletes to stay safe.”
According to a 2009 United Nations report, HIV was first diagnosed in PNG in 1987. In the late 1980s, PNG accounted for 21 per cent of all new cases of HIV in the Pacific.
According to the World Health Organisation, HIV was the leading cause of death at Port Moresby General Hospital in 2005. It found that the “high incidence of sexual aggression and other forms of violence against women appear to be fuelling the growth of the epidemic”.
By 2008 PNG accounted for 99 per cent of new cases in the Pacific. The UN report estimated that 54,000 people in PNG were living with HIV in 2008 and that unprotected sex was the main mode of transmission of AIDS across all countries in the Pacific.
It found that the primary reasons for HIV infection were gender inequality, gender-based violence, the impact of alcohol and drugs on sexual behaviour, and commercial sex.
PNG’s HIV problem has been described by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) as a “concentrated” epidemic, with certain key population groups and geographical locations affected disproportionately.
A study of 593 sex workers in Port Moresby in 2010 found 17 per cent were HIV positive. According to a 2013 UNAIDS report on the global AIDS epidemic, the estimated adult HIV prevalence in PNG is 0.5 per cent.
* Pacific Games coverage courtesy of BSP
