Why is medically advanced Israel lagging behind on AIDS?
"Sex is an integral part of my life, and I don’t intend to stick on a piece of rubber that will rob me of its pleasure.” Over the past few years, I heard words to that effect, in one variation or another, from a good friend who holds a senior position in an investment house. He wanted to explain why he always has unprotected sex. “It bothered me in my twenties, but since then I have completely freed myself,” he says. He didn’t repress the possibility that he would become a victim of an STD ? sexually transmitted disease ? with AIDS looming particularly large. On the contrary: he had regular checkups, once every six months on average. A few months ago he tested positive; he is a carrier. But even now, as a carrier, he hasn’t changed his tune. Taking a daily pill is a tiny nuisance compared to the alternative of enslavement to condoms.
Though one’s initial instinct is to accuse my friend of irresponsible behavior, more and more experts would say that he “handled the matter” in a mature way. Thanks to the frequent checkups, he was able to discover the virus within a relatively short time after being infected, and he immediately began treatment.
Medical treatment dramatically reduces the possibility that he will infect others. In fact, it turned out, in the course of his regular follow-ups, that his viral load ? the level of HIV in the blood ? is undetectable, thus diminishing the risk of transmission even further. Studies show that the likelihood of carriers transmitting the virus decreases by 96 percent if they are under medicinal treatment (even in cases of unprotected sex). The growing sophistication of the medicinal treatment, and its transformation into no more than a minor burden, has not only brought about a change in the carriers’ everyday life, it has generated a new approach to HIV throughout the Western world – both in the scientific community and also in the at-risk population (those prone to infection? ) .
The relevant data: in 2012, 496 new cases of infection were discovered in Israel (an increase of 8 percent over 2011? ), of which 150 cases involved men having sexual relations with men ( 30 percent? ). These figures are similar to the rates that were reported at the end of the 1980s, not long after the disease appeared, when 38 percent of the carriers in Israel were homosexual. But afterward, the rate fell steadily, leveling off in the 1990s at just 5 percent. In recent years, though, the trend has reversed itself.
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