Call for efforts to tackle ignorance of HIV/AIDS

Young people are prone to engaging in "magical, irrational thinking" around the risks of HIV/AIDS, the Dublin AIDS Alliance has warned.

Calling for greater public education about risk behaviour and sex, Ms Ann Nolan, director of the alliance, said: "Young women tend to think the pill is going to protect them from HIV. They think, 'I love this person, therefore this person cannot give me AIDS'. That is what we are up against."

She was speaking ahead of World AIDS Day today, with figures showing the rate of new infections diagnosed annually in the Republic having risen by 243 per cent since 1998.

In 2003 there were 399 new cases of HIV. Some 55 per cent of them were heterosexuals, 19 per cent were gay men, and 12 per cent were injecting drug users.

More than half were of sub-Saharan African origin, a third were born the Republic and 10 per cent were of unknown origin.

While migration had been a factor in the recent rise in diagnoses, "there is also now a high level of complacency around HIV", said Ms Nolan. "Young people have grown up post the media hype in the 80s and early 90s. They don't think it will affect them anymore."

To mark the occasion, the Dublin AIDS Alliance (DAA) will be running information stands today at O'Connell Street and Temple Bar, where condoms, red ribbons and information leaflets will be distributed.

Meanwhile, Dóchas, the umbrella group of aid and development agencies, has warned that HIV globally "is increasingly a women's disease".

Dóchas director Mr Hans Zomer said: "The majority of new infections are women. Gender inequality makes them more vulnerable."

An exhibition of photographs taken by Romanian teenagers living with HIV/AIDS will open today at the Helix Gallery, Dublin City University. The exhibition, part-funded by the US embassy in Bucharest, will run until December 10th.

An exhibition on the global AIDS epidemic by freelance press photographer Seán Dwyer takes place from December 2nd to 9th at the Atrium, Dublin Civic Offices, Wood Quay.