Thai Teenagers Shunning Condoms, Health Ministry Warns

On Sunday, the Health Ministry warned of an alarming trend of Thai teenagers shunning condoms, and it called for more campaigns to encourage their use as protection against HIV/AIDS. A survey of 350 teenage boys in Kalasin province found that only 24 percent regularly used condoms, believing it was safe to have sex with someone they knew.

"Sexual relations among teenagers now are happening between people who have known each other for a while, so they believe that they can trust one another more than a condom," said ministry spokesperson Nittaya Chanreung. "That's a worrying problem."

In the 1990s, Thailand mounted a national publicity drive encouraging condom use, which slashed HIV/AIDS infection rates. But the recently released three-year survey found that most teenage boys only use condoms when they have sex with sex workers, which Nittaya said happens relatively rarely.

"Campaigns aimed at preventing sexually transmitted diseases have worked well among sex workers and clients, who use condoms," Nittaya said. "But for teenagers we need to carry out more campaigns to promote their knowledge of this."

The survey found that the average age for boys to have sex for the first time had dropped from 16 years in 1998 to 14 years at the time of the study.

More than 700,000 Thais have HIV/AIDS, and 300,000 have died of the disease. The epidemic's impact is expected to grow as people who contracted HIV a decade ago begin to sicken and die, and the lack of access to antiretrovirals worsens the death rate.

Life expectancy in Thailand has dropped 1.4 years, to 68.9, due to the high number of young people dying of AIDS, the UN reported in July.

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