Condom Adverts is Defeatist: Or is it senseless?

Many are the rabid and vicious online readers, who I suspect look at headlines and launch scathing attacks on writers of articles. To all such people; can we for once have a fruitful discourse on a touchy topic as the above? Thanks and please read on!!!

Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immuned Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is no JOKE! (As if any one said it was).

A lot of talk at seminars, conferences, meetings, workshops, conventions and many other gatherings, (locally and globally), have gone into the topic of HIV/AIDS, a disease that is a threat to the continued existence of humanity.

A lot of money have been voted by Governments, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), at home and international, to help fight the scourge on one front, conscientize the populace on the other front and also to help people with the virus.

The media, print and electronic, is replete with messages couched to achieve a particular end in the fight against AIDS. Every now and then are we bombarded with adverts especially in the electronic media of one angle or the other of the AIDS bog.

From the days that we were growing up in the 90s, the ABC formula of prevention had been drummed so hard into our young minds that it virtually became part of us, so telling was the effect that we could afford to rattle along adverts as they rolled on air.

Over the years, these adverts have been modified with little or no changes in the message line, but for the settings and characters involved, I fell pushed though to express my reservations on the C component of the ABC formula of old.

Condom use, I have asked for what and why, indeed I have asked on the score that this was seen as the remedy for young people. Now here is the catch and where my beef really is; why at all should the use of condom be promoted?

That AIDS is not a JOKE cannot be overemphasized, box that up with the facts as put out by the global AIDS parameter and certainly, the condom use advert is at best a mediocre effort at increasing what it is ostensibly meant to pull the brakes on.

That 90% of infected people acquired the virus through sexual contact and also there being no cure for the virus means in every sense that these condoms are no solution in curbing the disease, at best I insist; they are rather contributing to the spread of the virus.

Those crude concepts about coming prepared should be taken OFF the screens and albeit remotely possible/ virtually impossible the many sexually explicit images that have become rampant in the media. This is a far better way forward than what we have now.

All of this is without delving into the religious angle of this potentially thorny subject, but across board (especially so for the orthodox faiths) condom use is not proper, to which end we can but as a people should not continue to see condom as a solution to curbing the marauding spread of the HIV/AIDS.

December 1, set aside by the United Nations as World Aids Day should more than any other thing; be a day to reflect on the gains and losses in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

My call is on all stakeholders; from Government to Ghana Aids Commission and civil society to contribute their quota even if an iota to lessen the scary prospect of increased infections.

As for the unreliable latex/rubber called condoms, it is miles from preventing the spread of the disease; its continued hype within the media shall at best keep eroding the social and moral fiber of our hitherto respected and morally upright society.

Hold It! What's Going on Here?

When morals die a pre mature death And decency is tossed into the dustbin When nudity becomes the cheapest item

Breast, backs and butts are left blatant Shame, courtesy and chastity lose value Shyness and sense of dignity, estranged

Pre-marital sex becomes the sad ideal Pregnant girls flaunt their illicit situations Boys cut corners to satisfy their pleasures

Open sex, drugs and crime pervade us And the media becomes a porn play field Sleazy and sassy people become models

Certainly, mankind is headed for DOOM As morality wails, immorality enjoys the hail Allahguide ALL MUSLIMS in these times

Surely for this and others: does my heart profusely bleed. Help us O Lord of the worlds.

© Abdur Rahman Shaban Alfa alfarsenal@yahoo.com/newcguide@gmail.com

- Abdur Rahman Shaban Alfa

Say: "O people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians)! Why do you reject the Ayat of Allah (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.) while Allah is Witness to what you do?" QUR'AN 3:98