AIDS Spreading in Chile

According to the Ministry of Health's National AIDS Commission, AIDS is now the second leading cause of death for Chilean men from Santiago between the ages of 20 and 44. Currently, there are 8,000 reported cases of AIDS in Chile, with estimates that 30,000 citizens are HIV-infected. The Ministry of Health estimates that by 2005 some 5,000 Chileans will die of AIDS annually and that by 2010 it will be the nation's leading cause of death.

In comparable reports recently released by the National Women's Service and the National Institute for Statistics, the number of Chilean women living with AIDS in 2000 was 13 times higher than the 1990 figure. Finally, shifts in the socioeconomic status of people with HIV/AIDS -- with significantly higher growth of HIV/AIDS among lower income groups -- and the spread of AIDS beyond Chile's cities have prompted AIDS activists to criticize the government for allowing "an essentially controllable disease [to take] the lives of far too many Chileans," says Rodrigo Pascual, president of "Vivo Positivo."

According to Edith Ortiz, the scientist responsible for the AIDS Commission report, "New infections are now spreading slower among the adolescent 19- to 24-year-old population and more rapidly in the 25- to 34-year-old group." This, she said, is because younger men are more open to using condoms, and adolescents perceive a higher degree of risk in sex because of their exposure to information about HIV/AIDS.

Ortiz explained what she called the "feminization" of AIDS as a result of a culture that prides stability over safety. "Therefore, one doesn't discuss sexuality, especially not extra-marital affairs. In fact, the subject of protection is often ignored completely in the name of stability," she said. The low use of condoms, she offered, is more due to a breakdown in communication between men and women and "machismo" than the influence of the Catholic Church, which is traditionally against contraception. Poverty and changes in migration and work-related urban-rural contact have increased the spread of the epidemic to villages and towns.

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