Be Prepared --- to prevent AIDS

Preparing to avoid AIDS

"Siempre listas" --- "Always prepared," depending on how one cares to style the translation --- is the motto of Panama's Girl Scouts organization, the Muchachas Guias.

This year at the organization's national campout, there were lectures and multimedia presentations about AIDS, how it is spread, how to avoid it and the proper use of condoms. It was straightforward medical advice from a gynecologist, which, although it noted that sexual abstinence is an effective way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, skipped the vitriolic attacks on premarital sex and mentioned homosexuality in passing without any condemnation or ridicule.

HIV is mostly a heterosexually transmitted disease in Panama now, and more than 30 percent of those Panamanians identified as infected are women. But worse yet, there are an estimated 20,000 people in this country who are HIV-positive and don't know it. Part of growing up healthy is learning how not to catch this often and so far incurable fatal chronic disease.

In Panamanian politics, late last year an alliance of religious groups and politicians killed a proposal that would have included a mandate to conduct such education in the public schools. Until the recent change of administrations in Washington, US assistance to efforts like this was highly restricted, on the face of it only with restrictions on helping groups that talk about abortion but in practice a block on aid to most sex education programs of every sort other than the preaching of abstinence. Those restrictions have now been lifted, and although one would be hard pressed to follow a money trail back to Washington, the possibility of funds from one source unties funds from another and it would not be wrong to say that the funding of this anti-AIDS education at the national Girl Scouts camp is some of the very first evidence of a sea change in US foreign aid policy.

Photos by Eric Jackson

Also in this section:
Major League assistance for Panama's Little Leaguers
Citrus season
Panama's national Girl Scout camp
Theatre Guild general assembly
Replica of Columbus ship to call at Amador
American Embassy people pitch in for Habitat for Humanity
Sebastian Lord, retired firefighter and community leader
Don Bosco Procession
Be Prepared --- to prevent AIDS
Court rejects challenge, Carnival will be on the Transistmica
Burning season
Panamanian university students learn English in Vermont
Diablos and Congos Festival coming to Portobelo
Traffic nightmares
Veracruz cayuco race results
National junior baseball tournament

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