Angeles City’s aim: Zero HIV detection
So screamed the May 21 banner story of Headline Gitnang Luzon. Zero HIV detection?
In utter disbelief, as I was? Read on: “The city government, in joining the world in lighting candles to remember AIDS victims, is aiming for a zero HIV detection through the initiative of the communities.” So the lead paragraph qualifies.
Zero HIV detection. It’s really there. So, believe. As I did. And on the bases of the headline and the lead, I readily assumed: The collective intelligence obtaining at the Angeles City hall is equal to that of a gnat’s.
I repeat, boldly now: The collective intelligence obtaining at the Angeles City hall is equal to that of a gnat’s.
Angeles City could not have aimed any lower than zero HIV detection in its campaign against the dreaded affliction.
Not only the lowest but even the basest the LGU could ever aim for. (So sorry, Deng Pangilinan, simply inapplicable here is your oft-quoted classic “Checkpoint English” of Norio and Marsing: “How much is the lowest can you make it down?”)
Aim high. Olongapo City’s Richard J. Gordon once mobilized his constituency to make their city the cleanest in the whole country. Aim lowest. The Angeles City government is now virtually directing its anti-HIV-AIDS battles.
While it may take a community initiative to light candles in some commemorative ceremonies – as indeed it took Angeles City, according to the story – it does not take one to achieve zero HIV detection.
All it takes for the city government to accomplish its aim is to close its eyes to any and all cases of HIV in the city, past, present and to come. No detection of HIV. No case of HIV. No case of AIDS. Ergo: totally safe sex at Fields Avenue and in the rest of the once city of lost angels. Simple as that.
Yeah, in one fell swoop – okay, with one banner headline – Angeles City appears to have found the fi nal solution to its HIV-AIDS problem there. I can’t quite get it but I find some parallelism there with that epic fail of a reporter who once uploaded his photo on Facebook, looking like he has had no sleep for a week, captioning it:
“So hard to hide tired eyes.” To which I commented: “Close them, dummy.”
Aiming for zero HIV detection makes the Angeles City government the proverbial ostrich burying its head in the sand, which unwittingly exposes its behind, thereby the temptation to kick it. As we may well be doing now.
Aiming for zero HIV detection makes the Angeles City government two of the three proverbial monkeys – the one seeing no evil and the one hearing no evil – thoroughly insensitive to what goes around. But we choose not to assume the monkeyness to say no evil.
So you’re reading this now, though evil it may come to those it will be inflicted upon. By aiming for zero HIV detection, the Angeles City government is shirking its responsibility to protect and preserve the health, and uplift the welfare of its people. Thus negating the LGU’s very reason for being.
Thus making a mockery of all those best practices, seal of good housekeeping, fiscal management and good governance awards and recognitions so far reaped by the city.
And a falsity of Mayor Ed Pamintuan’s 8thplace finish in the World Mayor Prize.
