HIV Kills Twice

Serbia is catching up with the world, at least in one area: condoms are here. Of 32 condom automates (which the Yugoslav Association for the Fight against AIDS obtained with financial aid from the international humanitarian organizations, the Action North-South, the Handicap International and the Humanitarian Bureau of European Union) 22 will be set up in Belgrade, and the rest in Novi Sad, Nis and Podgorica. A quantity of condoms sufficient to last till the end of this year has been received as a gift, and the entire income from their sale (price: dinar per piece) will be used for purchasing more. This action was assisted by JUL, and the automates will be installed mainly in dormitories.

Since the goal of this action is to suppress AIDS, it would appear that this disease strikes primarily students. No one can be reproached for caring for their own health, but out of almost a thousand registered cases of AIDS in Belgrade, only 35 were students. Moreover, as opposed to in the USA and the northwestern European countries where the most endangered group is homosexuals, or in unfortunate Africa where the HIV virus is mostly transmitted through heterosexual contact, in our country, the epidemic is spreading by way of a Mediterranean model known in Spain and Italy. In these two countries almost 70% of the HIV infected are drug addicts who inject drugs using needles, and this averages to 51.3% in our country. Although the virus is transmitted through sexual contact in this group too, the main cause of infection still remains somebody else's needle and syringe. Statisticians have noticed a correlation almost everywhere between the increase of those infected through drug use and the increase of those infected through heterosexual contact, so it is reasonable to believe that this is how 17% of those infected in Yugoslavia got infected. This group is second, after drug addicts (as opposed to in Europe, where homosexuals are in second place).

The most endangered is the young population, but most of all, those younger than 18 years old. Even 60% of the treated Yugoslav drug addicts had their first contact with drugs before becoming of age.

That means that one of the first measures for AIDS prevention should be registering and keeping track of the health condition of drug addicts and supplying them with sterile syringes.

One of the ways in which the infection passes from the drug addicted population into the population of "common" people is through female addicts who earn their "dope" by prostitution. Among tested prostitutes, however, only 4% were HIV positive, but their sexual contacts are, by the nature of their "business," very frequent. Also, in this country, prostitutes are criminals, so there is no accurate insight into their health condition, if any at all. No one even dares to think about male prostitution.

Here, there are three times more infected males than females, which can be explained by the fact that among our drug a