‘Turning Sex into a Game’: Gogodala Men's Response to the AIDS Epidemic and Condom Promotion in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Rugby league is the national sport of Papua New Guinea and the game's huge popularity and international profile has been used in recent condom promotion campaigns in the nation's fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In this paper, I argue that the promotion of condom use through rugby league requires a national campaign strategy that includes understandings of condom use and masculinity at the rural level. I demonstrate this through a study of Gogodala men's understandings of the epidemic and condom use in Western Province. The Gogodala are a Christian‐based society and many blame the national condom promotion strategy for an increase in promiscuity and for ‘turning sex into a game’. Condom availability in this rural area continues to be restricted to a family planning program that promotes Christian values and excludes unmarried men. I explore the male condom dilemma where young men are more concerned with avoiding accusations that their sexual behaviour puts them at risk of contracting HIV despite acknowledging the preventative value of using condoms. In this context young men disassociate themselves from the disease and condom use through a process of calculated risk or risk minimisation.     

China's Response to Pandemics: From Inaction to Overreaction

Two U.S. specialists (on the governance and foreign policy aspects of China's public health issues as well as its human and medical geography) examine how two different sets of policies implemented by the government of China have affected both the geography and political ecology of pandemic disease outbreaks (HIV/AIDS, SARS, and H1N1) over the past two decades. More specifically, they argue that: (1) broad development and reform policies largely responsible for China's rapid modernization/urbanization and increasingly successful perfomance in the global economic arena have generated unexpected side-effects in terms of the location, incidence, and spread of pandemics as well as the state's capacity to mount an adequate health care response; and (2) politically motivated public health policies implemented in response to the spread of specific pandemics in China have had unanticipated impacts on the progression of disease outbreaks and their outcomes. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H510, H750, I180. 3 figures, 2 tables, 76 references.