Twenty July 2010 South Africa & the world were astonished by the groundbreaking research on HIV prevention done by Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA). The leaders around the globe congratulated the researchers at CAPRISA. Women and men around South African & the world at large welcomed the results of a CAPRISA. This day will be remembered as one of those days that history were made in South Africa & be recognised by the world at large.
CAPISA 004 was a study designed to explore whether turnofovir gel could prevent HIV infection. CAPRISA study involved 889 rural women & South African Women (ages 18 to 40 years), all of this women were sexually active & HIV negative. According to FHI & CAPRISA (2010) “If the gel comes to market, all users of the product will need to know that the gel does not provide full protection against HIV”. The talk is now that the state is going to take every possible step to make sure that the gel is available to every woman.
There are numerous questions raised by the study and many people will think that I am ignorant, yet I will be rasing the questions that seek truth.
Even though that this are ground-breaking news, the reality is why study has been conducted in area that is dominated by high rate of poverty, unemployment, and where women are vulnerable and victims of abuse and rape?
Before the conduction of the study, are all of these women being told about the consequences of the study? Where they involved because they were told that they will receive incentives? Or was it just a voluntary action of those women hoping to save the world?
Why study has to take hundreds of black vulnerable women who are HIV negative and then wait for a “statistical momentous” number of them to be come HIV positive in order to draw a conclusions. This is really shocking and impertinence to the lives of black. How do we sworn the study as ground breaking news, while more than half of women who have participated are now left with HIV-positive?
The major question that will remain in heads of those who have heard about the study is, what will happen to those women who are now left HIV- positive????
Why these methods have been tested among blacks only, do we see blacks as people who cannot control themselves???? The idea of CAPRISA gel operates in a same logic of circumcision as HIV prevention methods that are persuaded among blacks.
