Media Watch
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ANALYSIS: HIV myths still cause for concern
Despite its misleading headline (“Task team to probe HIV-Aids”) a small article in last Friday’s The New Age (TNA) highlights one of HIV-prevention’s often overlooked bugbears.
The news short reports that KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize announced that a task team would be set up to investigate individuals and organisations claiming to cure HIV.
To those who think that thirty years since the first AIDS-related deaths were recorded myths and misconceptions around HIV would be largely dead in the water, this may seem wholly unnecessary.
Simple not always safe
An expose on the front page of the Daily Sun, on a young woman who allegedly seeks to avenge her own HIV-infection by “picking up men and infecting them”, overly simplifies the issues of HIV transmission and prevention.
Journalists have a responsibility to debunk myths and at the very least to set the record straight especially when it comes to HIV, which continues to be misunderstood by many misinformed South Africans.
But the Daily Sun fails to take the opportunity this story presents to clarify the hugely problematic issues around HIV transmission and prevention that this young woman’s story raises.
The record could easily have been set straight by highlighting that safe sex is the responsibility of all those involved and by explaining the nuances of HIV transmission.
Instead, the tabloid makes deliberately infecting someone else with HIV (who has willingly consented to sex) sound much more straightforward than it truly is.
“Momma” doesn’t slay the myth monster
Following our articles on the potential for Agony Aunts to address HIV, yesterday The Star’s ‘Momma’ tackled the HIV aspect of a correspondents unprotected sex story. And while JournAIDS is happy to see Momma using her power as a source of HIV information, there is still a fly in the ointment, or rather the ‘oil’.
A young girl writes to Momma this week, saying that her boyfriend has told her that there is no risk of her falling pregnant if they have unprotected sex because the “oil” in condoms has damaged his kidneys.
However his girlfriend seems to have a sneaking suspicion that her boyfriend’s tale is of the tall variety because she writes to Momma to ask if there is a possibility that she could actually fall pregnant.
Dispelling HIV myths: Knowledge is power
The Mail & Guardian’s Bonitas health supplement does a sterling job of dispelling common myths around HIV.Who ya gonna call? Mythbusters!
We’ve all woken to the 'sweet' sound of a mosquito hovering centimeters from our ear. Our response to this is usually to sit bolt upright in bed and flail around a la drunken Uncle Jimmy on the dance floor at a cousin’s wedding. When we’re satisfied that we’ve driven the little buggar away we generally flop back down and pass out until the next assault.HIV note gets the nod
There’s no pulling the wool over Daily Sun reader Noga Kobe’s eyes when it comes to HIV. The Daily Sun featured an HIV myth busting letter written by Kobe as their winning letter in Tuesday’s edition.Page 1 of 1 pages
