What do you associate “The Streetcar Named Desire”? With the Marlon Brando movie and the Tennessee Williams drama? This time it is also about art. For the art of living. Every day, several people in Poland become infected with HIV. Most are young people who have no idea about it. They infect others and don’t take drugs to stop the disease. In the “Streetcar Named Desire” action, future doctors will encourage their peers to take HIV tests. Throughout May, but they will go back to action in December. Special trams and buses will visit 15 cities, popular nightclubs and concerts. They will also appear at Juwenalia.
- Last year alone, nearly 1300 Polish women and Poles became infected with HIV. One-third are people in their early XNUMXs
- Most people infected with HIV in Poland have no idea about their infection. It infects others and does not take drugs that could save their own lives, because they would stop the development of AIDS
- Although in our country HIV tests are free, we do not perform them. Doctors do not even refer pregnant patients to them, although they are to have them performed in the first and last trimester. If they did, the women could take special medications and give birth through a cesarean so as not to infect the baby
Trams and buses called desire will run in 15 Polish cities, i.e. in Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Łódź, Lublin, Bydgoszcz, Katowice, Olsztyn, Szczecin, Białystok, Zielona Góra, Radom and Opole. They will travel along routes connecting the most popular nightclubs in these cities and places where important student cultural events are planned, such as Juwenalia. The best DJs and educators – members of IFMSA-Poland, who will tell passengers about the ways of HIV transmission and prophylaxis, as well as inform about where it is possible to test for HIV infection, will be more pleasant while driving these unusual means of transport.
Warsaw, May 6, 2019 – On Friday, May 10, the 8th edition of the nationwide campaign entitled “The tram called Desire” organized by the International Association of Medical Students IFMSA-Poland. This year, the campaign will cover 15 Polish cities. The “Desire tram” is to change the way Poles think about HIV, remodel their behavior and encourage them to test themselves for virus infection. The campaign is financed by a grant provided to IFMSA in the Positively Open competition by Gilead Sciences.
The number of people infected with sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV, is growing every year. On average, 3-4 people a day in Poland learn about their seropositive status. Worse still, people living with HIV are often unaware of this as the initial stages are usually asymptomatic. Meanwhile, prompt diagnosis and treatment are the key to success in fighting the epidemic.
– Poles often watch TV series in which, among others the issues of sexuality, betrayal, drug use, violence, love affairs, pregnancy, etc. are discussed. In my opinion, all these are pretexts for parents or grandparents to evoke this topic at home and encourage other household members to express their views. The point is not to ask directly whether the child experiences such situations, but whether what is shown in the series or in the reportage also applies to him. What does it think about it? – said prof. Zbigniew Izdebski, a sex worker on the occasion of the #mamczasr talkac action. And Anna Marzec-Bogusławska, director of the National AIDS Center, emphasized that “infection is no longer a challenge for medicine, you can live with it for many years, and after reaching an undetectable viral load, become completely non-infectious for other people.”
However, we should have time not only to talk, but also to research. With this in mind, and right now, the “Tram called Desire” campaign is being implemented, combining fun with education.
Trams and buses called desire will run in 15 Polish cities, i.e. in Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Łódź, Lublin, Bydgoszcz, Katowice, Olsztyn, Szczecin, Białystok, Zielona Góra, Radom and Opole. They will travel along routes connecting the most popular nightclubs in these cities and places where important student cultural events are planned, such as Juwenalia. The best DJs and educators – members of IFMSA-Poland, who will tell passengers about the ways of HIV transmission and prophylaxis, as well as inform about where it is possible to test for HIV infection, will be more pleasant while driving these unusual means of transport.
“The statistics on HIV epidemiology in Poland may be worrying. Last year, 1275 new infections were recorded, of which 31 percent. it concerned people in the age group 20 – 29. What is especially sad at the time when we have access to free, effective and safe in the long term therapy, as many as 29 deaths from AIDS were registered, including 3 in this age group. It is estimated that over 50 percent. people with HIV in our country do not know about their seropositive status, which is mainly due to the fear of performing tests. That is why our campaign is primarily aimed at de-demonizing the virus, said Katarzyna Rylewicz from IFMSA-Poland, the Polish National Coordinator of the Tram called Desire.
Data from Ponton educators show that more and more Poles have their first birthday before their eighteenth birthday. And for a long time, at the age of only 15. More than 50 percent of adolescents do not use a condom during sexual initiation. Fearing pregnancy, many young people choose to have oral and anal sex. And he has no idea that it actually protects against pregnancy, but not against sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, HPV, HCV (the one causing the type of jaundice that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer).
In addition, although many of us are angry with the content of school textbooks preparing for family life, young people do not learn from them, because they “receive” sexual education on the Internet.
The effect is that although the number of teenage pregnancies in Poland is not growing, the number of teenagers and twentysomethings who go to hospitals with venereal diseases is increasing.
– We are glad that this year we can once again support the campaign “Tram called Desire”. This is an important campaign because it is extremely popular and targeted at young people. Modern drugs have made it possible to live normally with HIV. However, let’s not forget that the virus is still dangerous if someone is infected but does not know it and does not start treatment. Thanks to the IFMSA-Poland project, thousands of young people all over Poland learn about the threat every year. That’s a lot – says Paweł Mierzejewski from Gilead Sciences, coordinator of the Positively Open program.
Trams and buses called Desire will run in Poland this year according to the following schedule:
May 10 – Krakow, Lublin
May 11 – Gdańsk
May 17 – Warsaw, Bydgoszcz, Łódź, Olsztyn
May 20 – Zielona Góra
May 23 – Opole, Radom
May 24 – Białystok, Szczecin
May 25 – Katowice
May 28 – Wrocław
The travel calendar for December is still being finalized. At the end of the year, the action will cover three cities: Bydgoszcz, Gdańsk and Warsaw.
The media patrons of the campaign are the website at: Temat.pl and ikmag.pl
The patronage over the campaign was taken by: the National AIDS Center, the Polish AIDS Research Society and the Polish Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians.
Materials about the event and photo galleries from previous editions of the campaign are available on the Facebook profile of the event: https://www.facebook.com/TramwajZwanaPozadaniemPolska/
***
The aim of the Positively Open Program is to promote HIV prevention and knowledge about the possibilities of living with the virus normally. As part of the Positively Open program, a competition is organized for institutions and people who would like to run or already run programs in the areas of education and activation, as well as HIV / AIDS prevention and diagnosis. The partners of the program are the President of the Capital City of Warsaw, the National AIDS Center, “Służba Zdrowia”, the Termedia Publishing House and the Gilead Sciences company, which in the last six years has allocated grants of nearly PLN 2 million to the implementation of competition projects.