Cultures You Selected. Then Describe Two Cultural

¶ … cultures you selected. Then describe two cultural attitudes, two cultural beliefs, and two cultural practices regarding HIV / AIDS in the cultures you selected. Finally, explain two factors that may impede the success of an HIV / AIDS prevention program in the cultures you selected and why. Support your response using the literature provided.

Attitude towards AIDS: Cultural differences

Although AIDS is an illness that knows no cultural barriers, the ways that cultures interpret the illness can be profoundly different. In the United States, when the illness first began to spread, there was a tendency to 'ghettoize' the disease. During the early years it was referred to as 'the gay plague' and the focus was solely upon its impact in the gay community. But as the illness grew more widespread to other populations, it became clear that this was not a useful paradigm through which to view AIDS. Additionally, the creation of effective drug treatments to mitigate the spread of the disease meant that AIDS was no longer a 'death sentence' for sufferers, which also changed public perceptions of AIDS victims.

Different nations have been affected to varying degrees by AIDS. The continent of Africa has been particularly, famously hard-hit. Overcoming conservative resistance to practices such as wearing condoms and limiting promiscuity has been a challenge in many patriarchal African cultures, plus there have even been movements to deny the existence of AIDS by the South African government. In the island nation of Japan, Japan's isolated status as an island and relatively low infection rate has caused it to take an 'ostrich' hiding-its-head-in-the-sand perspective. "With prevalence still so low, HIV / AIDS is generally regarded as a disease that only affects faraway countries or other people not close to home. The epidemic was first identified domestically among hemophiliacs who had been infected through contaminated blood products. When the contamination was linked to the failure of pharmaceutical companies and government officials to exercise proper safeguards, scandal erupted" (Japan's response to the spread of HIV / AIDS, 2004. The Japan Center for International Exchange 9).

Within Japanese culture the taint of 'foreignness' remains regarding AIDS, in stark contrast to the United States The Japanese public still regards AIDS as something that 'cannot happen here,' despite the fact that alone of all the major industrial powers Japan's AIDS rate is still climbing. There is no widespread testing campaign in Japan, nor are there government-led awareness-raising campaigns as exist in the United States. The Japanese sense of cultural uniqueness and separation from the rest of the world is seen in the cultural attitudes expressed in the Japanese AIDS policy by public officials, by the media, and most unaffected citizens.