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Education Designed to Reduce Complacency: The Realities of HAART
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"Don't you know AIDS is over?"
2005 Mr. Ogunquit Contestants http://www.ogunquitnow.com/images/mrogunquit068.jpg
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New drug therapies that are lengthening the lives of many individuals infected with HIV may also be leading to misperceptions about the continuing threat of the virus.
"Younger men are less concerned about HIV today because it's treatable and because they haven't seen their peers dying. Ads showing very healthy HIV positive guys taking their medications reinforce these beliefs" (29).
"I'm not going to as many funerals as I used to...On the other hand, we're not all sitting around jumping for joy because there are people who are very sick. It may well be that they're not going to die right away, but the quality of their life is not good" (23).
With complacency on the rise and approximately 50% of rural HIV-positive men and women across the nation engaging in unprotected sex despite their infection, current prevention messages in Maine clearly need to be rethought. New ways to educate citizens about the serious of the disease should include detailed information about HAART and the fact that treatment plans are extremely complicated, do not work for everyone, and often involve adverse side-effects. Calling on people living with HIV to talk about the hardships of the disease, despite the availability of medications, may also help to decrease complacency, particularly among young MSM.
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