ABSTRACT: This article was written on 1 March 1992 by Luigi Cerina, member of the Radical Party and chairman of the Italian National Coordinating Organization for HIV-positive people.

(THE PARTY new - n. 6 - march 1992)

The latest WHO figures show that there are 446,681 cases of AIDS in the world, with an increase of 28,000 over the last quarter. According to experts, to get close to the real size of the phenomenon, these figures should be multiplied by three. In addition, there are 11 million HIV-positive people. The worst hit country in the world is the USA, with 202,843 cases, and the highest rate of increase.

According to figures released by the Superior Health Institute, the number of fully-blown AIDS cases in Italy on 31 December 1991 stood at 11,609. Of those affected, 65.8% contracted the virus through sharing syringes, 14.8% through homosexual relations, 6.7% through heterosexual relations and 2.8% through transfusions of blood and blood derivates.

Furthermore, published figures show how the growth rate of the disease has markedly changed in recent years.

There has been a reduction in the percentage of homosexuals infected with AIDS, while there has been an appreciable increase in the percentage of drug addicts. The greatest increase has taken place above all in a type of relation that for a long time was considered risk-free: heterosexual relations. What this shows is that by underestimating the risks of infection, the disease spreads quickly, as occurred in Europe during the early Eighties, when not to mention sex and drugs the populace was exposed to an indiscriminate spread of the disease. And information and prevention campaigns still suffer from an arrogant moralistic slant, avoiding direct confrontation of the problem. People still have their eyes closed. In prisons, rather than hand out free syringes and condoms, people pretend that drugs do not get in, and that homosexuality is not practised; laws are passed that turn drug addicts into prisoners and to prevent syringes being distributed inside prisons. To avert this mass murder, in countries such as

Italy where drugs have become illegal, the battle against AIDS has to a large extent become a prohibitionist battle. In public places (and penal institutions fall into this category) there is no provision for distributing condoms; any kind of different sexual act, or more simply expressed sexuality, is still punished, considered as being outside the norm (in the legal sense of the term) or, at worst, it is ignored; those who freely choose to love one another are not protected.

Until campaigns for information and prevention lose their moralizing attitude, a "psycho-damned" disease such as AIDS will be difficult to curb.

HIV infection is a disease, no more and no less. As such it must be fought using the means that science and medicine make available. It is true that there must continue to be money put aside for research into the discovery of a vaccine and therapies, but it is also true that we need rational answers to the problems that the disease throws up. It is indispensable for voluntary workers and associations active in the field to share their experiences, just as the scientific community must interact: if the fight against AIDS is to be successful, it must free itself from provincialism and grow with the challenge by internationalizing the answer to the problems raised.

Yet on a practical level, too, the condition of sufferers and HIV-positive people provides much cause for concern. No AIDS-sufferer or HIV-positive person can directly defend their interests. There are no HIV-positive people on the Commissione Nazionale Lotta all'AIDS, the highest ministerial consultative body on AIDS in Italy.

The Council for AIDS problems, a body created to tackle the problems surrounding HIV, made up of the most important voluntary organizations in Italy, has submitted a series of requests to the Ministry of Health. These include the adoption of the new criteria proposed by the Atlanta Centre of Disease Control for the definition of AIDS diagnosis, and a change of parameters to consider all people who are seropositive with less than 200 T4 (lymphocytes, immune system cells) as AIDS sufferers.

If these new parameters were used, then amongst other things this would allow many prisoners who have contracted the virus to leave jail while still in good health and look after their treatment. The same would be true for all those who apply for a disability pension: as things stand, those who apply may not receive such a pension while they are still living. There would be a measurable difference in the concession of home care: the right to such care would be extended to many ill people who now are excluded.

There are still a number of requests on the agenda. One of the most vital is a reduction in the length of time for the bureaucratic approval of drugs vital to the treatment of AIDS sufferers, and exemption from prescription charges for all HIV-positive people.