German HIV rate on the rise again

Bad news party people, the international terrorist, AIDs, continues to rise in Germany. While I know you people are well informed about safe sex, others around you might not be so tuned in...apparently. If you see clueless looking people hooking up at the pub this weekend, do a good deed and slip over a nice shiny new condom.

Report details below. This public service announcement has been brought to you again by Deutsche Welle: Apathy and False Security Lead to Rise in German HIV Cases

HIV just isn't the big deal (=death sentence) it used to be. I personally know two people who are positive and they both smoke, drink, party, take their medication, have sex, work = have a life.

In the WEST (as opposed to: in Africa, Asia, etc.) it just isn't that dead-serious any more.

Now most of those young (and not so young) people who don't give a shit (or thought) and have unprotected sex don't necessarily know about this. But the atmosphere isn't scary any more.
Me, I started to be sexually active in the middle of the AIDS scare and was sure I'd die within minutes should the condom fail

AIDS is and will be a problem of the poor. Being HIV positive in Germany might not be something you tell your colleagues or neigbours about. But you'll live...

For how long... its amazing, I know a few HIV positive people, who became positive in various points in their life. Some young some old. All of them say that it affects who you are, who you have sex with and where you take your life in the next step.

Some of the older people I know live life day to day. Some of the younger people are so screwed up on HIV medications that they cant stop and have fun.

Its also not a problem of the poor, its a problem of the masses, hetrosexual, homosexual, lesbians, puffs, transvestites - everyone. Take care and protect yourselves!

There endth the lecture

For anyone who is intrested in HIV/AIDS prevention work, I know a few friends who work for a group called Orden der Perpetueleen Indulgenz E.V. A non profit group who have a huge amount of fun along the way.

Take care and play safe!

agree wholeheartedly pootle.

Between 1993 and 1996 I worked at the City Hosptal in Edinburgh doing a postdoc with positive drug users. We buried on average 4 people a week from a cohort of around 1000 patients. It was heartrending seeing young people like that wither away in agony to death.

Then along came combination therapy and suddenly the deaths dried up and there were spectacular resurrections of patients at death's door.

A media frenzy started to say that HIV was a manageable illness and no-longer life-threatening and could be managed simply on medication for the rest of a patient's life. hence came the myth that HIV is no longer serious.

The reality is that, even in the West people do still die from AIDS. Some patients cannot tolerate triple therapy. Others develop multiple-drug-resistant strains which are becoming more and more common.

Even for those on combination therapy: this will often mean daily regimes of taking very large numbers of pills at particular times of the day - an ordeal in itself. And many of these treatments cause severe side effects such as depression, lipodystrophy, skin problems, visual problems and psychosis.

The reality is that medicine can prolong life for some AIDS patients in the west but it is certainly not a simple case of a pill a day keeping the lurgy away.

nobody said they have to sit in the corner and wait til they die, but they need to be smart about it. Yes, people with HIV live longer than 20 years ago, but they are longer infectious (because they live longer). If they let their guard down once they can still infect someone else.

Its not a disease of the poor, believe me... I see enough people from different walks of life with HIV in my office. All have caught if from different sources- needles, blood transfusion, and partners. Had a patient who got if from her husband, who got it from a blood transfusion. They had 3 kids- all unaffected.

Problem is the young seem to think they are invincible and don't use proper precautions. So that is also why there is a rise is many sexually transmitted diseases again, I also read that syphillis is back (cannot remember where I read it).

We need to wake up and smell the coffee, and see that everyone is at risk. And that comes from proper education.

To some degree I actually agree with dimmer. Growing up we really had the pants scared off us because of this disease. They way it was portrayed to us growing up was like an epidemic, that with every "accident" you were sure to be infected. The reality wasn't quite as scary as the hype. I went into a family planning clinic in Calgary to get tested and upon asking the nurse about incidences she said that in 8 years they only had two confirmed cases of HIV+. She explained that this was due to the low incidence of of needle use in Calgary. Since then I haven't been as freaked out about it.

Initially we were oversacred of this disease and when in the following years half our friends didn't end up dying from it, in fact people lived for many years with it we just became desensitised which led to a false sense of security. I suppose this false sense of security will now do the opposite and as evidenced here will cause incidences to rise again.

with all due respect, I don't think that any gay man growing up in the 80s thinks it was 'overhyped'. We watched our friends die in tragic youth. Thank God the British government realised that if it was happening to gay people it could happen to everyone else and mounted a highly successful ad campaign that personally I think is the reason why for many years the UK had the lowest rates of infection in Europe.

The media then had a powerful effect.

It does again now - with AIDS no longer portrayed as serious the rates of infection in gay and straight people in the UK (particularly the young) are starting to show the increased levels of infection that everyone had feared nin the 80s.