Branching off Bangkok’s bustling Sukhumvit Road is a quiet, narrow street, Soi 12, that’s a sort of refuge from the seedy and exotic offerings on the main drag. In that tranquility, it’s easy to forget Bangkok’s reputation as a destination for sex tourism. Then you see the sign for Mechai Viravaidya’s restaurant: Cabbages and Condoms.
The theme is near to his heart. Mechai, known locally as the Condom King, has been a vocal proponent of condom use for years, first as a means of population control and later, as HIV infection quickly spread through Thailand, as a weapon in the war on AIDS.
Mechai has held posts in Thai government; as minister of tourism, he was instrumental in the promotion of Thailand’s widely touted 100 Percent Condom Campaign, which has been credited with the developing country’s decline in the rate of sexually transmitted HIV infection.
Mechai should request an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. It would promise to be an enlightening evening.
In a visit to Africa this week, the pope took a position against condom use as a tool in AIDS prevention. “You can’t resolve it with condoms,” the pope said. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”
Mechai would take issue with that, and would have reams of data to support his position.
The pope underscores the Vatican’s long-held position that rejects condoms as artificial contraception, and that marital fidelity and pre-marital abstinence are the key weapons against HIV infection.
In Third World and developing nations, where cultures differ radically from those in industrialized nations, those are hollow concepts. With 22 million people infected in sub-Saharan Africa, altering the trajectory of the disease will require far more than philosophical suggestions for behavior control.
The pope is right in that distribution of condoms will not resolve the crisis. Perhaps his visit to a part of the globe that saw three-quarters of all 2007 AIDS deaths will convince him that fidelity, abstinence and education won’t do it, either. Instead, broad-based efforts incorporating the promotion of condom use and education on sexual health offer the best chance to rein in the pandemic.
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