Bush and aids
I watched a program on aids on pbs, and found out that everyone was pissed at clinton b/c he pledged to spend on this money on global aids, and didn't. The same happened with bush, until recently. I didn't really follow politics until bush was re-elected, so this was mainly news to me. Here's a qoute i found from pbs.org
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Anway...
It takes more education than you think to understand how to deal with AIDS. There's a myth in parts of Africa that having sex with a virgin cures AIDS, resulting in many rapes of virgin women, thus spreading the disease further. To assume that it's easy to know this assumes that you've had some semblence of a modern and half-good education, or that you've been exposed to the information. It's actually a pretty ethnocentric viewpoint. Anyway, beyond that, the bigger problem is not whether they know or not that it comes from sex, but the social ideals that result in people having sex anyway. It is hard to get people to use condoms because in their culture it represents you, like, not being a real man. And if the woman insists then it is insulting and stuff like that. This may seem ridiculous from our viewpoint, but it's really not. Female condoms are an option, but that requires the woman to take that precaution beforehand and sometimes for the man not to find out. Many people in Africa are also born with AIDS.
Basically, the issue is just way bigger than you realize and is not nearly as simple as "just be careful when having sex". There are tons of stigmas, social norms, and other such things related to this that are serious concerns.
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