This report argues that AIDS-prevention programmes must target young men as well as young women. Many male youths know very little about the disease and do not know where to go for information. They are constrained by the necessity of impressing their peers, hiding their emotions and showing strength rather than weakness. And yet precisely because they are still young, change is possible. There is enormous potential to stop the epidemic in its tracks, or at least to slow it down.
Evidence shows that young men can learn responsible sexual behaviour.
If they fail to do so, it will not be because boys will be boys or because gender relations are fixed in stone, but because society has failed its young people. Nearly 20 years after the first cases of AIDS were identified, researchers and prevention workers are coming to the firm conclusion that the global epidemic is driven by men. While HIV is mainly transmitted through sex between men and women, because men have more sexual partners than women, they tend to control the frequency and form of intercourse. Young people around the world are vulnerable to AIDS as never before. While more has been learnt about AIDS in a short time than about almost any other disease, many of the basic questions about the development of AIDS and the behaviour of HIV, the virus which leads to AIDS, remain unanswered.