HIV prevention and the positive population.
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 positive-targeted 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.
King-Spooner
S
S
State Hospital, Carstairs, Lanark, UK.
D000533:Altruism; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D006679:HIV Seropositivity / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans