A word to the young gay Ugandans having random unprotected sex 4

A couple of days ago I learned about yet another Ugandan young man in his 20s who had died in Mulago Hospital. I didn’t know him but he was called Henry Lugoloobi, and was popularly known as ‘Junior.’ Reports reaching me suggest that he, too, succumbed to HIV/Aids complications.

You might recall that barely ten days ago, we attended the funeral of a young man, Abby Mukasa (Love) who had lost his fight with HIV/Aids at just 27.

We might be seeing the tip of the iceberg in these cases.

The incidence and spread of HIV/Aids in the gay community in Uganda continues to be the elephant in the room that, if not addressed with the seriousness it deserves, will have far-reaching consequences on the gay community … and ultimately the entire country.

This is one area, though, where everyone has to play a part, not just activists.

We all know how HIV/Aids spreads. We know that unprotected sex especially puts one at risk. In Uganda, one hears of horror stories of young men having impromptu sex in bar toilets and all these seedy places (it is never clean, nice places, is it? Not that the venue makes a difference but there you have it) they meet. Yet, it is also true that gay boys are not showing much interest in health programs or adherence to using condoms.

The message, thus, needs to be blunt:

Activists can’t hold everyone’s hand; it is for grown-up people to wake up, smell the coffee and take control of their own lives.

Yes, ARVs now help HIV/Aids sufferers live long fruitful lives and HIV is no longer the sure death sentence it used to be 25 years ago – if you are a government minister or have tons of money to pay for your medication and care.

But if you are a struggling 20-something man out of Kampala’s slum areas, with a so-so education and dreadful work prospects, please remember that you  live in a banana republic where social attitudes are as Neanderthal as medical facilities are medieval. If your ass is broke, which is the case for most of you young men having raw sex in toilets and dark alleys after one bottle of beer that you couldn’t afford,  you are likely going to catch something lethal.

Then you will eventually end up at Mulago Hospital in a filthy, smelly, mosquito-infested ward where all the poor go to die because that is how the poor in Uganda die.

One or two of your relatives might eventually show up at your bedside and give some token help of fruit juices you can no longer hold down and platitudes. But it will be too late because you will have wasted a lot of  critical intervention time, refusing to be tested, refusing to accept the test results, or  pretending that you are fabulous and all you are suffering from is malaria.

The terrible conditions at Mulago, the lack of support from your relatives and the attendant lack of money to meet your medical needs will cut your already frail immune system tenfold. Then you will slip away, leaving behind a motley crew of shocked gay friends who will not know how to tell the world that you died of a preventable, manageable, sexually transmitted disease.

Finally, your embarrassed relatives will pretend to the world that they did all they could for you.  One of them will announce to the mourners at your freshly filled grave that you were much-loved, you had a child (whom no one will have heard of until then), they did what they could for you but the Lord had other plans in the brain fever that you died of.  And that will be it.

As the mourners walk away, one of your friends will ruefully remark about how the festivities to put your body into the ground cost twice as much money as was needed to provide you with the medical care that you never got.

Your fate is in your hands guys. Get tested to know your status.

And put a condom on it.

Related articles

• HIV/Aids claims a promising gay Ugandan’s life (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Will AIDS activist’s death boost HIV support services? (76crimes.com)
• HIV Aids is already killing LGBTI Ugandans
• 35% of MSM in Kenya have HIV!
• Raymond Kiwanuka RIP!

Blacksexploitation alive and well in Africa! 1

Check out this graphic website if you are not at work or sitting next to your mother!

It shows young black boys having all types of sex, most off it without protection, raw.

Exploitation or informed choice?

All the boys in those images are Africans, a number of them Ugandans. And, yes, they are all likely over 18.

Why then would I say that they are being exploited by whoever is filming these scenes when the players are adults?

Simple.

I am an adult man of, ahem, 38, well-traveled, more or less seen it all. It’s rather more difficult to manipulate me than a 24 year-old who has never been beyond the slums of Kawempe in Kampala’s outskirts.

These guys are as vulnerable as they are impressionable and will do anything for just $100 or the mere promise of it. But the consequences of making that money by doing bareback porn films are too catastrophic for them to appreciate, given their limited exposure.

As a friend from another forum pointed out, the camera work is quite good which suggests that these scenes are being shot by people who are experienced in what they are doing. For them to let these young naïve boys have bareback sex, water games and goodness knows what else for the camera is exploitation if not abuse. One could argue that it is even racist but I have no evidence of that so I am not going to make that charge at this time.

What can be done about this sort of abuse? Technically nothing since the boys are older than 18. But pressure can be put on the film-makers to make sure that protection is being used given the fact that medical facilities are nearly non-existent should these boys catch a communicable disease.

The people filming these bareback sex scenes have blood on their hands and pointed questions to answer.

I am not even going to start on the potentially career-destroying repercussions should the images become public which they usually do.

Enough said.

HIV/Aids claims a promising gay Ugandan’s life 5

You’ve heard me rant and rave about how Aids is killing more gay Ugandans than the Bahati Anti-gay Bill?

It is true.

The HIV incidence rate in the gay community in Kenya where they have done the studies stands at 35%. It stands to reason that it is around the same pandemic levels if not higher in Uganda where hardly any studies are being done due to government disinterest, paranoia and, likely, bewilderment and/or ineptitude where dealing with HIV in the gay community is concerned.

You have also heard me rant and rave about how the gay activist campaign in Uganda needs to retool its approach and stress the humanitarian health (read HIV/Aids) angle more than than the “stop the hate” one since even our most homophobic relatives will step up to the plate if/when we are sick? Events continue to assure me that my thinking is right.

Abby Love (RIP)

Only last week, I attended the funeral in Entebbe of a young gay man/lady of just 27. Yes, 27. S/he died of meningitis brought on by HIV/Aids complications. I knew of Abby Mukasa and spoke to him once or twice in places I cannot quite place in my mind at this time. At 27, he still had his entire life ahead of him and his death cut shot a promising performing career.

Here is the tribute from Abby’s confidant and carer, Stella, a woman whose selflessness knows no bounds and who is going beyond the call of duty for a cause that she doesn’t have to be involved with since she is not even gay herself. Uganda really needs a lot of people like Stella.

Stella’s ode to Abby Mukasa is rendered all the more poignant since there must be hundreds of HIV/Aids sufferers in Uganda’s gay community who are going through exactly the same travails as Abby struggled with – mostly alone:

*******************************************

“My CD4 count is only 47!” she confided in me.
“That is really very low,” I replied and stared at my confidant. “Why didn’t you go for anti-retro-viral therapy much earlier?” I asked.
“I was afraid of those medicines, very afraid,” she replied.
“But what are you afraid of in the medicines?” I shot back.
“People can talk and talk about you if they ever find you in that line for medicines,” she stated as a matter of fact.
“Let them talk. One day they will stop and move onto another gossip topic,” I replied.
“I also hear that the medicines for AIDS give you night-mares and you see things chasing you in the night. I also heard that you can lose sleep to the point of losing your head. Hmm!” she replied as she continued eating her lunch at a restaurant near the university.
“So tell me, now that you have started taking these medicines, tell me what night-mares you have had so far?”
She rolled her big soulful eyes up and down at me. She laughed. I laughed.
“Ah-ah-ah, tell me about your nightmares these last two weeks since you started taking the medicines,” I pressed on.
“No, I never got nightmares, I am a lucky girl! But then I take long to sleep. And I feel very cold. But then at night, I get night sweats which make my clothes wet.”

She started taking her ARVs too late to be useful. And then she deteriorated in her physical well-being and her body struggled to contain the immune-boosters. This reaction, and then that reaction and then one day, I had to drag her out of bed, onto a bodaboda motorbike with the support of a good friend and into a clinic. She was too ill to remain in bed.

Abby Mukasa

At that point, I had also been buying her food every week for a while. She would send me her shopping list – mainly starch staples, animal and cereal protein, fruits, spices and apple juices of all varieties. She was a fussy eater: no posho, no white porridge, no passion-fruit juice because it stinks, no this not that. But she was also very appreciative of surprises: I loved that fresh mango, the millet flour with crashed soya was yum, chicken is better than beef… I started buying her food when the supply from the support organisation was suddenly dropped. She was struggling with her ARVs and she needed a good nutrition – common sense said so.

At the clinic, laboratory tests diagnosed typhoid, malaria, syphilis, and a UTI. Her CD4 count had dropped to 35 during the recent hospital visit. The dehydration was treated instantly by drip. Members of her support organisations were there to pay the bill. They came after some cajoling – but they did come and they did meet the bill for a week of treatment. She seemed to be recovering on the treatment.

And then there was a relapse… More illness – this time stronger than before. More pain. A pleading to stop taking the medicines because they were not working. This time the support organisations’ representation ferried her to Mulago Hospital. They posted representatives at her bed-post. Friends visited her bedside. Her family also eventually came to her bedside. She would slip in and out of sanity with such ease. At one time she used the usual address of Mummy-Stella and then she would instantly refer to me as Joseph. We took pictures. She said she wanted to remember this time of misery when she recovered. She asked me to burn her a music play-list. There were twenty songs on it. She planned to listen to this music as she lay in the miserable hospital bed, surrounded by other very ill patient. She told me she was excited about attending the upcoming Badilisha concert, and would do whatever it took to attend – even if it meant crawling to Lugogo! She made me promise to post all her pictures on her Facebook wall-page.

Within four days she was finished, gone, dead. At her funeral, they announced that she died with meningitis.

At her funeral they never thanked the people who informed me about her condition when the organisations were not aware. At her funeral, they never thanked the people who carried her onto the motorbikes. At her funeral they never mentioned the single mother of a lovely baby who cooked her food every day. At her funeral, they never thanked the person who was faithfully bathing his sick body, attending to her toilet needs, sitting her through long dreary days and long wee evenings, the person who tended to her even when it she was no longer cooperative. At her funeral they never thanked her friend who forcefully carried her to hospital, got us a safe doctor’s appointment, connected us to the wider support organisations, or did daily follow-up.

At her funeral they never thanked her friend who supported her regardless. You see, at her funeral, they named and thanked the support organisations and their representatives for the money and the other material support. At her funeral, I never heard acknowledgement of people that had no money but cared for her.

Related articles

• Will AIDS activist’s death boost HIV support services? (76crimes.com)

Uganda’s Christine Ondoa has HIV/Aids questions to answer 1

Aids/HIV infections in Uganda are rising by about 1.5% a year, bucking a trend that saw the country being touted as the model for HIV/Aids prevention and treatment back in the 1990s.

15,600 of new HIV infections in 2010 were among MSM: Aids Information Center report

There is an ugly secret as to why the numbers are rising and will continue to rise as surely as night follows day:

The government of Uganda has totally ignored homosexuals, men who have sex with men (MSM) and sex workers in their HIV/Aids prevention and treatment campaigns.

First off, and for the benefit of many Ugandans who continue to display a worrying failure to understand the definitions:

Homosexuals are men/women who are only emotionally attracted to those of their gender. Men who have sex with men are … men who have sex with men, and they can do so even when they are not emotionally attracted to them, such as in prison where there is no alternative!

Then there are also men/women who are emotionally attracted to both women and men respectively.  These are called bisexual.

MSM can be straight, gay or bisexual. What unites MSM in Uganda is that they generally indulge in gay sex in secret (down low) unless they have come out to their loved ones and friends which is almost unheard of.

The fact of the matter is that, mostly due to the stigma surrounding homosexual sex in Uganda and much of Africa, homosexual men are still sleeping with and/or marrying women in large numbers. Their homosexual feelings don’t go away, of course, so they keep up respectable married facades and then sleep with men whenever their gay johns hit them.

If you are walking down the aisle with your man he is not gay, yes? If your son is walking past you as he exits the church with his new bride and you are shedding tears of joy, you can breathe a sigh of relief because he is not gay, yes? If your son gives you a grandson, he is not gay, yes?

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Your boyfriend, husband, son, could very well be a man who has sex with men or a totally homosexual man who has found a way of compartmentalizing his gay feelings to please you, his relatives or fit into society.

“So, what is the problem if my son, husband, brother is gay and he has found a way of hiding it, up to and including having a family?” I hear you ask.

Because he is nonetheless still sleeping with men – in secret. Because he is doing so secretly, the chances are that he cannot keep one partner since he gets his gay kicks in whenever he can, wherever he can, with whoever he can. Even if he could settle with just one male partner, the infrequency of their rendezvous usually means that the partner will have sex with other men. After all, who is going to sit around waiting for his married lover to steal time off, perhaps once every month or quarter, to be with him?

Prayer can heal Aids: Minister of Health, Christine Ondoa

Unofficial figures suggest that there are at least 500,000 MSM and lesbians in Uganda. Let’s assume that only 250,000 of them are male (should be higher but never mind). Let us also assume that just 50,000 of the 250,000 are sleeping with men and women. Now imagine if the 50,000 have two female sexual partners; a wife and girlfriend on the side. If they were to catch HIV from a male or female partner, try to gauge the multiplication effect this might have on the men and women they are sleeping with, and the men and women the partners are in turn sleeping with. How does 100,000 new  infections from just that cohort sound?

Precisely.

That’s why it boggles the mind that Uganda’s Ministry of Health is still showing no interest at all in making the spread of HIV/Aids in the gay community the priority it should be. How can an entire cadre of sensible, educated, knowledgeable professionals really hide their heads in the sand in the face of such a glaring gap in their HIV/Aids prevention and treatment program?

How come the government is ignoring the damning research its own people have come up with?

Uganda’s Minister of Health, Christine Ondoa, surely has a lot of questions to answer.

Related articles

• Ugandan HIV campaign targets “cheaters” (gantdaily.com)
• HIV/Aids is already killing LGBTI Ugandans! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda’s ‘anti-homosexuality bill’ would be disastrous for HIV response (crofsblogs.typepad.com)
• HIV-positive activist to Uganda: Stop impeding AIDS battle (76crimes.com)

HIV/Aids is already killing LGBTI Ugandans! 9

I have a prediction to make:

The headline-grabbing lawsuit brought by the friends of  Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) against Scott Lively in Massachusetts recently will likely not succeed.

The basis of the lawsuit is that Lively incited hate and violence against Ugandan gay men and women through proxies such as Stephen Langa and Martin Ssempa, ” for the decade-long campaign he has waged, in agreement and coordination with his Ugandan counterparts, to persecute persons on the basis of their gender and/or sexual orientation and gender identity.”

I think Scott Lively cannot be proved to have incited any persecution of gays in Uganda. Yes, he has on various occasions said things we don’t like about gay cures and how gays are terrible for Uganda,  Africa and the world. That’s just his opinion and he is entitled to it. I believe  American and Ugandan laws entitle him to those opinions, too.

But, one suspects, that the American friends of SMUG who filed the lawsuit (SMUG could not afford such a lawsuit) knew this, and their real motive was a public relations (PR) one.  Observers can debate whether they used the most cost-effective tactic or not. I think their tactics have a place in human rights struggles such as the one SMUG is engaged in.

Which brings me to the real reason for writing this:

I think we should be doing more to move the debate forward in the gay community in Uganda. A commentator, Frank McMullan, recently suggested that I do that instead of peppering activists with questions. I think he had a point.

So, what do I think the gay rights struggle in Uganda should be about?

The gay struggle needs to augment the “We are here, we are queer/They are killing us” gay human rights movement, now the only currency doing the rounds in activists’ circles in Uganda and around the world, with an additional, serious, movement targeting the health and wellness of gay Ugandans in Uganda.

The faces of ‘Gay Uganda’: Frank Mugisha & Kasha Nabagesera

The  “they are killing us” activists have a place still. It is just that it seems that judicial killing of gays is all we are talking about and everything else, such as advocating for equal access to specialized medical care that Ugandan heterosexuals take for granted, is but a parenthesis. The reason for this might be that the current crop of Ugandan advocates already have enough on their plates. Given their schedules, it would be surprising if they didn’t.

There is thus a need for a different, medically qualified (or trained) arm to focus on the less ‘sexy,’, less headline-grabbing health and wellness issues.

Uganda needs a separate “HIV/Aids is killing us” message to push for studies to establish statistics, trends of HIV/Aids among men who have sex with men, and the general LGBTI population. It goes without saying that there are infinitely more  Ugandan gay boys (especially) who have died of HIV/Aids, due to neglect and lack of care,  in the last five years than have been killed by mob action or the law because they are gay.

We thus need to let the nascent movements trying to make HIV/Aids in the gay community in Uganda a hot topic, too, have room to breath because we can’t wait for the fight against “killing the gays” to be won for the fight against HIV/Aids in the gay community to get organized. Think of it as a two-pronged approach: health/public health/HIV AND Gay Rights with different protagonists leading each one since the expertise required is different.

If you sense an undercurrent of criticism, it is intended. I am of the view that, in the quest for the  “they are killing us” dollars and media space,  the “HIV/Aids is killing us” message  in our community has been relegated to an afterthought.

Yet you read that the incidence of HIV/Aids in Kenya (where information is more readily available and the fight against the spread of  HIV/Aids in the gay community more concerted) is 35% among men who have sex with men. It stands to reason that the statistics are grimmer in Uganda where studies are stymied by government disinterest and, little to no coordination in the community.

The only professional study I have seen on the HIV scourge in the gay community in Uganda, the CDC’s Crane Survey Report (2008/9) suggests to me that we are sitting on a problem so serious as to make the effects of David Bahati’s proposed anti-gay legislation look like a walk in the park. If nothing is done on the HIV/Aids problem in the gay community, the 1.5% annual rise in the gay infections being reported countrywide will shoot to 5% and beyond – as surely as night follows day.

The HIV/Aids problem in the gay community in Uganda therefore needs to be made a much bigger priority than it is at the moment. It would be fair enough for the current faces of  the “they are killing us” message to argue that they neither have the time nor the competence to fight every battle.

That’s  why the Ugandans willing to fight the “HIV/Aids is killing gays”  fight should be actively encouraged to step up to lobby Uganda’s government and anyone else they think will listen. Our friends in America and elsewhere should also be encouraged by the already established representatives of ‘Gay Uganda’ to organize PR exercises for that message, too.

Related articles

• 2012 gone – bring on 2013 (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Large crowd of U.S. Gay Activists at MA Federal Court to Support Ugandan Gays against Pastor Scott Lively (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
• Ugandan sex workers post highest HIV rates (upi.com)
• 18,000 MSM Ugandans with HIV/Aids ignored
• The folly of ignoring the gay community in HIV prevention programs

35% of MSM in Kenya have HIV! 1

HIV incidence among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Kenya is as high as 35%, investigators report in the online edition of AIDS. Incidence was just 6% for bisexual men, but was 35% in men who only had sex with other men

This should be a terrifying wake-up call for every political leader in Africa but, sadly, it won’t because likely none of them is paying attention.The leaders that do, such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Cameroon’s Paul Biya, would see this report as excellent news.

35%???!!!

Oh my goodness gracious me!

Second money quote:

A total of 449 HIV-negative MSM were recruited to the study. Of these, 372 (83%) reported sex with men and women. The remaining 77 men (17%) reported sex exclusively with other men.

Yes, that means that a lot of men who have sex with men are also having sex with women.  The repercussions for entire communities are too dreadful to think about but there is little point in pretending that our leaders understand this … or care.

It boggles the mind that with these startling statistics, leading government health professionals in sub-Saharan Africa seem to be mute. What such numbers means surely can’t be lost on them.

35%??? And this is just in the one country where studies have been done. What about places like Uganda where no research in this areas is likely to be done in the foreseeable future?

Related articles

• Malawi Prisoners at high risk of contracting HIV through homosexuality (nyasatimes.com)

The Sudanese need an education – fast!

The claims in this report are what you get when a government ignores education for a generation.

Money quote:

‘Ignorance, more than anything else, is responsible for viral transmission, it has nothing to do homosexuality or age differences. ‘If the government and political opposition are serious about tackling Sudan’s growing HIV infection rates, then safer sex education is the key.’

But of course!

If only they had kept abreast of world developments, the Sudanese government would have known this 20 years ago! Duh!

Related articles

• Sudan blames gay teen sex for AIDS (oblogdeeoblogda.me)

 

Transitions – Paul Weatherly 3

Paul Weatherly

News has finally reached us that Paul Weatherly passed on August 23, 2012 following a prolonged illness. He apparently succumbed to kidney and heart failure. I didn’t know it myself but he apparently didn’t keep it much of a secret that he was living with HIV.

Paul Weatherly  was a great  friend of Uganda and was quite instrumental in steeling the backbone of what was then a nascent gay movement in Uganda 10-15 years ago.

No, he didn’t promote homosexuality as detractors like to argue; he encouraged the gay men and women in Uganda who were trying to form pressure groups to fight for gay rights to keep going. One of the  Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) founders has intimated that Weatherly was “key in the foundation” of that organization.

Among the relatives that we know of, Paul is survived by an 87-year-old mother.

You have fought the good fight.

 

Dr. Paul Semugoma throws down the anal sex gauntlet 3

To the obvious discomfiture of Uganda’s officials, Dr. Paul Semugoma made a tour de force of a speech at the 2012 International Aids Conference in Washington, DC in which he deplored the failure of Uganda’s government to take the issue of men having sex with men (MSM) seriously.

First the sobering research numbers:

“It is estimated that the adult male HIV prevalence in Kampala is 4.5 per cent but the prevalence estimates among men who have sex with men (MSM) is 13.7 per cent. Most MSM still have sex with women, many are married, co-habit with women, and have biological children. MSM in Kampala appear firmly embedded in the general population.”

Such high numbers of infection in the MSM population point to the obvious point that this group is having a lot of sex without condoms. So, Dr. Semugoma suggested rectal microbicides.

Dr. Paul Semugoma

“Huh? Rectal what?” I hear you ask.

A rectal microbicide is a product, usually a gel, inserted into the anus so that it acts as protection against  sexually transmitted infections during anal sex.

In Uganda, where resources are scanty even with the best will in the world, it makes sense, as Semugoma argues, to offer these microbicides in form of a lube. Since, duh, lube is required for anal sex, it makes sense to provide MSM with lube which also serves as a microbicide.

Ahem, ahem.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t consulted on the scheduling because if I had been, the follow-on speaker should have been an official from Uganda’s government.

In any case, Semugoma, who came out as an openly gay Ugandan a few days ago, has thrown down the anal sex gauntlet.

“The epidemic in Africa is characterized as sexual, and there is nothing  about anal sexual, which is a big problem. It’s something that needs to  be addressed,” said Jim Pickett, founding Chair of IRMA, which has been  spearheading the development of rectal microbicides as a HIV prevention  tool among MSM.  “Creating something that is African-specific has been very key so that people know about anal sex and anal health.”

Yes, Mr. Simon Lokodo and your blinkered friends: gay men all over the world (and straight/bisexual ones, too) actually engage in consensual sexual conduct that often involves anal sex. None of your huffing and puffing will do away with that reality so you might want to put on your thinking hats and look at what to do about the implications for your brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, fellow cabinet ministers, spouses who, lo behold, might come into sexual contact with a MSM who is having anal sex without any protection from HIV.

Over to you Ugandan officials. The ball is now in your court.

Transcript of Dr. Semugoma’s presentation can be found here and here.

The HIV war in black America has been lost!

It’s official. The war  to combat HIV/Aids among men who have sex with men (MSM) in black America is irretrievably lost.

Rod 2.0 summarizes the underlying issues. What stands out, in no particular order, is that:

• black youths, aged 13-19 have totally thrown caution to the wind and are having bareback sex at will
• black MSM  are too reluctant to be tested
• black MSM are too poor to get access to medical care when they find out they are HIV positive (which likely informs why they are reluctant to go for testing)
• black MSM are more likely not to know their HIV status than their white or Latino counterparts
• black gay activist/advocacy groups have not paid enough attention to HIV/Aids in the black community
• mainstream black organizations (such as churches) have largely ignored the gays and, thus, the HIV problem

Of course many will wax lyrical, a la Pollyanna,  about how we must all work together, get empowered,  face up to the problem, unite, sing Kumbaya and so on and so forth. Others still will wax indignant that the problem is … homophobia, implying that once the ‘homophobia’ is tackled, the problem will be brought under control.

All that is wishful thinking of course because most black gay men are not listening and, if they are, they don’t care about the message they are hearing.  We are thus faced with the same conundrum that those fighting to stamp out smoking know only too well; once you tell adults about the risk of smoking, there is practically nothing you can do if they choose to light up.

And so it is with the HIV/Aids prevention message.

Everyone, young and old, knows how HIV is mainly contracted, yet black MSM are continuing to catch it at epidemic rates. That points to willful volition, and there is nothing anyone can do about someone who has the information and still chooses to act in a way that puts him at risk.

The only solution to this runaway epidemic among black MSM is a cure. Not even the preventative Truvada development will help as that is too expensive for most black folks – even if they were willing to take a daily pill for when they may sleep with someone with HIV.

Unless a cure is found, HIV among black MSM will only continue to spread unabated. It’s time to accept that reality and focus on dealing with it.