| "Virtually driven out of Australia, we keep her memory and example alive on our www.aids.net.au website.
"Sex Education and HIV information must be made urgently available to everyone,critically women and girls, with 14,000 new global infections occurring every day.
"Over the past 20 years, 23,556 people in Australia have been infected by HIV and 6,363 have been killed by AIDS.
"An estimated 1,510 women in Australia are living with HIV while 440 have AIDS.
"While the world outside Australia faces 5 million HIV infections a year - and 3 million deaths - Australia is, sexually, the odd man out in the Asian-Pacific region with its HIV infections to be found overwhelmingly confined to homosexual males - over 80%.
"There were 870 diagnoses of HIV infection reported in Australia in the year ended March 31, 2004 - between 11% and 12% of them women. The average age, 37 years.
"The Australian Commonwealth government is about to unveil its Fifth National Strategy on AIDS and this time complacency must be confronted. The relentless upward surge in the infection rates, especially in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria must be arrested.
"New initiatives are required and the new messages need to be put where they belong: in the mainstream media, not confined to gay saunas and gay magazines.
"Millions of dollars have been poured into AIDS Councils and in some cases that's just produced ballooning bureaucracies.
" The heterosexual nation at large is being left out of the HIV/AIDS information loop. It's as if it's been decided they're not having sex any more,while the reality is that they've flung caution to the wind and unprotected sex is the 'in thing'- no longer regarded as a risk. So many could be infected without even knowing it.
"Sex education is a piecemeal affair across the country.
"Of particular interest this year was the decision of Health Minister Abbott in March to bring Fr Michael Kelly,S.J., onto the HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmissible Infections Subcommittee of his newly constituted Ministerial Advisory Committee on AIDS, Sexual Health and Hepatitis (MACASHH).
"Fr Kelly would have to be embarrassed by the church's HIV/AIDS response in Melbourne being limited to a part-time chaplaincy- style service operating out of a secret address and with an unpublicised phone number while it also pretends we no longer exist as one of its previously lauded agencies.
"More vitally, although he admitted at the time of his appointment that he had no particular knowledge of the (HIV)subject , Fr Kelly has the critical opportunity , the vital obligation,now, to speak up on the validity of condom usage, most especially in those cases where a spouse or partner is HIV infected.
"Given that there is no official magisterial teaching by the church on condoms, we publicly challenge Fr Kelly through 'Online Catholics' to make this position quite clear now, as his World AIDS Day contribution.
His very acceptance of that subcommittee position could only be regarded as his endorsement for condom usage given they're a must in the government's anti-AIDS battle. Time now for him to come out and say so.
"What better opportunity does he have, could he have, than now, at this particular moment, on this World AIDS Day - dedicated to Women, Girls, HIV and AIDS to offer a Catholic voice of reason and support for women and girls - wherever they struggle to live- with or without HIV?
Brian Haill
President,
The Australian AIDS Fund Inc
PO Box 1347
Frankston, Victoria, 3199, Australia | 
