'Explosive' AIDS Epidemics Hit Asian Sex Workers

Prostitutes in China, Indonesia and Vietnam are falling victim to "explosive" AIDS epidemics that will spread to their customers' wives and girlfriends, a UN-funded report said today. While large-scale preventive action had kept the disease at bay in parts of Asia, there was "clear potential" for HIV/AIDS to spread, according to "Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic Network." The report found soaring levels of HIV infection among intravenous drug users and sex workers in some regions.

HIV testing of sex workers in three provinces in China showed recent rapid increases in infection rates. In Guangxi province, 9.9 percent of sex workers were found to have HIV in the second quarter of 2000. The figure rose to 10.7 percent by the fourth quarter of the same year. In Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, HIV infection rates among sex workers and their clients increased to more than 20 percent in 2000 from virtually zero in 1996. Indonesia recorded a jump in HIV among sex workers to 26 percent in three geographic areas from 6 percent previously. There were also outbreaks of the virus among injecting drug users around the country.

The report noted the success of prevention programs in hard-hit Thailand and Cambodia in limiting the spread of HIV and said there was great potential for containment in Asia because most of the epidemics in the region remained concentrated. The report said only three Asian countries -- Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand -- had registered nationwide AIDS prevalence rates of more than one percent, compared with rates 10 or more times higher in some African countries. The report said Asian national figures hid concentrations in certain groups and were meaningless in countries like China and India, where some regions have populations larger than many countries. "Already today I think about a third or 40 percent of the world's people with HIV are living in Asia," UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot said.

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