AIDS in SE Asia linked to vice
AIDS in SE Asia linked to vice
MANILA (Agencies): The prevalence of AIDS in Southeast Asia was linked to the number of men visiting prostitutes and the number of clients a prostitute sees, researchers said here yesterday.
The group, Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic, which is backed by the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development, said it had studied the incidence of AIDS in Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines and Thailand.
One of the researchers, Jim Chin, told an international AIDS conference here that in Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand the disease had developed at an "explosive" rate.
He said that in the three countries, the number of clients serviced by a prostitute was two to three times higher than that of a prostitute in Indonesia, Laos or the Philippines, where infections remained low.
The study also found that the percentage of sexually-active males who visited prostitutes was higher in the three "explosive" countries than in the low-prevalence countries.
Daniel Tarantola, a co-chairman of the study, said they needed to collect more data on why behavior was different in the two groups of countries.
AIDS, the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is an incurable disease spread by sexual contact and the sharing of body fluids and syringes.
Tarantola said the behavior of intravenous drug users was another important subject to study, but added that many of the countries involved did not have enough information on their drug users.
He said some countries do not even acknowledge they have large numbers of injecting drug users until AIDS emerges in that group.
The group noted that in some countries like Thailand, AIDS first emerged among intravenous drug users then spread to the general population.
Prostitution
Meanwhile, a group of Asian prostitutes attending the AIDS congress urged governments yesterday to recognize their profession and said that being forced to work underground was promoting the spread of AIDS.
The four women and one man, representing the Asia-Pacific Sex Workers' Network, told a press conference that society should not treat them like criminals but protect them from police harassment, including arrest, assault and rape.
"We call on the delegates of the International Congress on AIDS... to recognize that sex work is an occupation... to accept it is the unsafe conditions at work rather than sex work itself that causes risk of HIV infection," the group said in a statement.
They launched the call at the end of a four-day international AIDS conference in Manila to discuss how to curb the spread of the disease in the Asia-Pacific region.
United Nations officials estimate that by last year up to seven million Asians were carrying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes AIDS.
Global estimates of the infection stood at 23 million last year. The number is expected to double by 2000, with probably half of those infected being in Asia.
UN officials say heterosexual sex accounts for the majority of the infections.
"We want to be able to work without being arrested," said Thai bar girl Napaporn Soimalai, 29.
Napaporn said she was now a student at a Bangkok university studying psychology, but continued to work as a prostitute to support her family and her studies.
The group's spokeswoman Khartini Slanmah, a 34-year-old Malaysian, said that by making prostitution illegal in many Asian countries, governments were promoting the spread of AIDS.
Prostitution might be difficult to legalize throughout Asia but it should be treated as ordinary work, she said.