HIV prevention and the positive population
- 1 March 1999
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in International Journal of STD & AIDS
- Vol. 10 (3) , 141-150
- https://doi.org/10.1258/0956462991913763
Abstract
Efforts to prevent the spread of HIV have, to an overwhelming degree, addressed themselves to the HIV-negative rather than to the positive population. But it makes sense to direct more preventive work towards positive individuals, for 3 reasons. First, because changes in the behaviour of positive people have a disproportionately greater effect on the spread of the epidemic- so positivetargeted interventions are potentially more cost-effective, and in many cases enormously so. Second, positive individuals already show a degree of preventive altruism that generally outweighs the self-protective efforts of those who are negative. And third, there is reason to believe that this preventive altruism can be strengthened by appropriate interventions. Some of the practical implications of a shift to greater positive targeting, involving both novel interventions and modified familiar ones, can be sketched out.Keywords
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