AIDS Battle Must Not Be Ignored, Say Experts

Condoms appear to be reducing the number of new AIDS cases, but no government can afford to ignore the epidemic, delegates to the 6th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific have been told. About 3,000 officials from more than 40 countries are represented at the conference, which concludes tomorrow in Melbourne, Australia. Thailand and Cambodia have seen the numbers of HIV-infected people drop, mainly because of the wider use of condoms. But the biggest concern there, as in other Asian countries, is the spread of the disease via men who have sex with prostitutes and then pass on the infection to their wives or girlfriends.

"It's estimated that 12 to 13 percent of all males in Cambodia have sex with more than one type of sex partner," said Dr. Hor Bun Leng, of the Cambodian National Center for HIV/AIDS. In Asia, about 6.4 million people are living with the disease, second only to the sub-Saharan Africa region. Among sex workers, 31 percent of prostitutes are HIV-positive, compared with 16 percent of occasional sex workers such as women who work in bars, karaoke clubs and massage parlors. In 1998, the HIV infection rate among prostitutes peaked at 42.6 percent.

Cambodia has the highest national rate of HIV/AIDS infection in Asia, but the number of new infections each year has dropped as prevention strategies take effect. Infection levels in Cambodia now are about 2.7 percent, or about 170,000 adults. Fifteen percent of married men and 21 percent of unmarried men went to prostitutes in 2000, compared with a total of 11 percent in Japan and 10 percent in Thailand, surveys have found. So far, the spread of AIDS across Asia has been relatively contained to high-risk groups including prostitutes, intravenous drug users and homosexual men.

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