AIDS infection rate being pushed along by drugs
AIDS infection among heterosexuals.
Visiting infectious diseases expert from Atlanta Dr. Robin Dretler yesterday claimed cocaine caused hyper sexuality and promiscuous behaviour. Women addicts were especially likely to offer unprotected sex for drugs.
The trend, he said, was especially marked in Bermuda where, as in other Caribbean Islands, AIDS was fast moving away from fringe groups into the population mainstream.
In the United States 70 percent of cases are still found within the homosexual community, Dr. Dretler said. But in Bermuda the statistic is just 30.8 percent with heterosexual AIDS sufferers a fast rising 19.3 percent according to the latest available Government statistics.
Dr. Dretler, programme director of the Infectious Disease Society of Georgia will be speaking to Bermuda's medical community this week on how to detect the disease's early symptoms. He will also be addressing the general public at a forum entitled "AIDS: the facts'' on Thursday between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. at Cathedral Hall, Church Street.
Eventually, Dr. Dretler believes, Bermuda will follow the route of Africa and other Third World countries where AIDS has become a heterosexual disease and where the ratio of men to women with AIDS is one to one.
In his own practice, Dr. Dretler claims he has 25 married couple with AIDS many of them from middle class families.
"AIDS is crossing the class barriers,'' Dr. Dretler said. "People who are educated decide it can't happen to them, poorer people think it happens to homosexuals and homosexuals think it happens to other types of homosexuals,'' Dr. Dretler said. "Nobody is a candidate for saying I must change my behaviour.'' He added it was for the whole community to elicit changes in behaviour.
Children in particular needed AIDS education.
"It is especially tragic when I see 18 to 21-years-olds with AIDS,'' Dr.
Dretler said. "One has to be responsible for oneself and we as a community have to be responsible for each other.'' Dr. Dretler's visit is sponsored by the Allan Vincent Smith Foundation.
