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Drug use, prostitution put Asia's 'Big Three' at risk
By Richard Ingham
November 25, 2003
China, India and Indonesia — which are home to 40 percent of the world's
population — now face HIV epidemics that could leap out of risk groups and into
the mainstream, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization warned Tuesday in
their annual "AIDS Epidemic Update." "Injecting drug use and sex work are so
pervasive in some areas that even countries with currently low infection levels
could see epidemics surge suddenly," it said.
Of the estimated 40 million HIV infections worldwide, around 7.4 million live
in Asia and the Pacific. A million people in this region will have become
HIV-infected this year, and half a million will have died from the disease.
In China, "…serious, concentrated epidemics have been under way for many years
in certain regions (such as Yunnan, Xinjiang, Guangxi, Sichuan, Henan and
Guandong) and are poised to take off in several others." The current source:
increasing numbers of injection drug users (IDUs) sharing needles, as well as
low condom use among sex workers and gays.
In India, epidemics are under way in several states — including Maharashtra and
Tamil Nadu (where sex worker HIV prevalence in some cities exceeds 50 percent),
and in Manipur (with HIV prevalence among IDUs between 60-75 percent). The
epidemic is spreading to rural areas and the wider populace, said the UN
agencies.
In Indonesia, "Over 90 percent of injecting drug users have been found to use
unclean injecting equipment in three major cities, and in one of these, as many
as 70 percent report having had unprotected sex with sex workers." Fewer than
10 percent of the 7 million to 10 million Indonesian men who frequent sex
workers use condoms consistently.
While Cambodia and Thailand got high marks for promoting condom use in the sex
industry, Vietnam "faces the possibility of a serious epidemic" arising from
drug users, and Mynamar "has little time to lose," with an epidemic growing
among IV drug users and migrant workers.
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