It's Pride Month 2025, and the Department of Health has just reported that there's a 500% increase in HIV infection rates among Filipinos aged 15-25. It's a very alarming number, especially since it's particularly focused on younger people still getting infected despite access to information on the internet and availability of additional HIV prevention measures like PrEP. Some people are going back to the classic explanation - infection rates are higher because of increased testing and awareness, blah blah blah. But we've been saying this for YEARS - DECADES even. If it were just the overall infection rate spiking, then yeah, maybe it's still a lot of that. But it's particularly younger people, so that has to indicate some degree of increased infection rates among "Gen Z" as it were.
The lack of education and awareness will always be a factor - the lack of proper sex education in schools, along with a potential lack of access to correct information about sex and how HIV spreads, will always play a key role in this country. But it also means that there's a lot of unprotected sex still going on - and I can't help but feel that maybe the big push for PrEP may have had unintended consequences. Maybe if people on PrEP also continued correct and consistent use of condoms alongside PrEP, then their HIV prevention effects would have been more effective. But you just need to look around social media to see that a lot of people have used PrEP as an excuse to go bare. The only challenge there is that when meeting other people, you just have to trust that they're taking PrEP as instructed, or whether or not they're even honest about being on PrEP.
This increased rate of infection is somewhat unique to the Philippines and doesn't reflect global or even regional trends when it comes to HIV. So we have to look for solutions that fit our particular situation. Admittedly, addressing the education issue on a government level (whether national or even local) is a bit of a stretch - maybe this DOH declaration will change things, but I doubt it. So we have to look at other messaging efforts. And I don't think it's realistic to try to get everyone on PrEP since (1) interntional funding remains suspect, especialyl after the dismantling of USAID, and (2) lower income individuals are less likely to go out of their way for PrEP refills just for the sake of "safer" fucking. We need to figure out a more effective way of reaching out to more people across social classes, and we probably need to go back to a condoms-first messaging approach, as it's still a more cost-effective solution and one that would probably be easier to hide from their familes versus a pill you need to take every day. Whether you contract HIV or decide to go on PrEP, it sort of looks the same from the outside since you're still taking something every day.
The timing of this DOH announcement feels a little suspect given Pride month, but it is what it is. So we deal with the problem at hand, even if it's the same challenge that we've been facing as a community since even before I figured out I wasn't straight. I know I'm not an "expert" in this field, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that something's not right in our current approach if the very young are still getting infected like this.
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