AIDS prevention gives short shrift to gays

In Malawi, that country's first organization working on behalf of gay men was created in 2006 with the backing of World Bank officials and other international agencies.

Called the Centre for the Development of People, the group surveyed 100 gay men about discrimination to prove to the government that such men existed in Malawi. Homosexual sex is punishable up to 14 years in prison in the African country.

The organization also found through testing 200 gay men that about 21 percent carried HIV compared with 12 percent for the general adult population.

"This means that we are not moving ahead with the fight against AIDS," said Gift Trapence, the organization's director who has received e-mails threatening hanging.

AIDS activists say they avoid using words like "homosexual" or "gay" and instead use the label "men who have sex with men," or MSM, so their work is not impeded by the stigma.

Ashok Row Kavi said he has learned the importance of carefully choosing his words in India, where he started one of the country's first organizations to work with gay and bisexual men.

The Humsafar Trust found nearly 14 percent of the gay and bisexual men it surveyed in 1999 were infected with HIV. Kavi said when he told India's AIDS officials they "totally panicked because until now they believed these men did not exist."

But last year they added a definition of men who have sex with men to their health planning program to start prevention campaigns. The definition includes married men.

Kavi has been training health workers how to ask men if they have had gay sex and not scare them away.

"I tell them to say things like, 'There are many cultures where men are very close to men. Are you one of these men?'" he said. "These questions have to be sensitive," especially in India, where sodomy is illegal.

"That's why the word homosexual is not used," he said. "If anyone asks a man that, he will slap you."

More from msnbc.com Racist webcam? TheGrio's test says no View an interactive, HD panorama of N.Y.'s 30 Rock Scoop: No Tiger cub on way for Rachel Uchitel Census workers wanted, local roots preferred Cosmic Log: Decades of future science Answer Desk: Gold may be riskier than it seems Send your holiday pictures to troops

MORE FROM HEALTH

Health Section Front

Medical gift cards pay for doctor, dentist visits   War vets, shelter dogs heal together in program How to avoid common cancer-causing agents Do you get good abs from sex — or vice versa? Fighting breast cancer, Teresa Heinz urges tests U.S. expands efforts to regulate meds in water 5 big, fat holiday health lies 60 million in U.S. vaccinated against swine flu 5 million doses of nasal H1N1 vaccine recalled Your body’s 10 weirdest health clues Health Section Front   Add Health headlines to your news reader: