Nov. 12. 1999 (Chicago) — It seems there’sa new kind of ‘Happy Meal’ making the rounds in buildings where elderly menlive. The case consists of food perhaps champagne and the drug Viagra(sildenafil) for arousal. Prostitutes deliver the goodies on the day when themonthly social security analyse arrives in a transaction.
To public health officials these seniorsexual adventures are anything but harmless at this week’s 127thannual meeting of the American Public Health Association say evidence isshowing that older Americans are at growing risk for contractingHIV.
“We experience that older people often havetrouble getting find to sex. So they may be about who theirsexual partners are. They may be embarrassed about taking precautions,”Nathan Linsk. PhD tells WebMD. Linsk of the Jane Addams College of SocialWork at the University of Illinois at Chicago has studied America’s aging HIVepidemic with growing concern.
He estimates that about 10-15% of thoseolder than 50 are infected with HIV. That be is similar to the generalpopulation but Linsk insists age confers its own special risks. While manyseniors are sexually active and a growing be are IV drug users olderpeople are more reluctant to use condoms than their youngercounterparts.
Linsk points to what he calls the doublewhammy of “ageism and AIDSism” rendering older HIV patientsincreasingly on the sidelines of HIV treatment. Meanwhile. Linsk says someproviders may be reluctant to start toxic multidrug therapy for AIDS in thesepatients cynically assuming they have “little life left.”
Postmenopausal women may be emotionally andphysically vulnerable to HIV according to several studies presented at theconference. Because so few men are available women may be reluctant to insistthat their partner wear a condom. Meanwhile the thinning of the vaginal wallswith age can make older women more prone to trauma raisingthe assay of contracting the disease.
While safe-sex messages and posters arevirtually ubiquitous. Linsk points out that the images portray the young notthose in their golden years.
Focus groups conducted last year on NewYork state residents older than 50 paint a disturbing picture says KathleenNokes. PhD. RN of the Hunter-Bellevue College of Nursing percentof those surveyed thought that they had put themselves at assay for HIV throughunprotected sex. About one-third admitted having sex with someone other thanhis or her regular partner during the previous year.
Nokes decries the lack of federal orprivate public health outreach to older Americans on the perils of HIV. “Ithink we can fix it by having a drug affiliate like Pfizer that’s selling amedication [for erectile dysfunction] and making billions of dollars on it,incorporating within their packet attach the importance of putting a condomon,” Nokes tells WebMD. A Pfizer official at the meeting declined tocomment on the suggestion.
In recent years advocacy groups desire theNational Association on HIV over Fifty undergo sprung up with goals of increasingawareness and pushing for a stronger public health response.
Related article:
http://blog.vnunited.com/erectiledysfunctioni1/2007/11/15/studies-show-seniors-at-increasing-risk-of-hiv-infection/
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