WUNRN
HIV/AIDS
- Asian Women Highly Vulnerable to Infection from
Risky
Sexual Behaviors of Men - Husbands/Partners - UN
11
August 2009
Source:
Reuters
By
Tan Ee Lyn
BALI,
Indonesia, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Fifty million women in Asia are at risk of being
infected with HIV because of the risky sexual behaviour of their husbands or
boyfriends, leading health experts said in a report on Tuesday.
More
than 90 percent of the 1.7 million women now living with HIV in Asia became
infected while being in monogamous, long-term relationships with men who
engaged in risky sex behaviour, the report launched by UNAIDS said.
These
include men who had other sexual partners or who were drug users.
"We
need to target men who engage in paid sex, injecting drug users, men who have
sex with men, who can transmit the virus to their partners," Jean D'Cunha,
regional director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women in South
Asia, told a news conference held on the margins of an HIV/AIDS conference in
Bali.
"We
need to question the attitudes, values and behaviour and transform these so
that women would be less vulnerable to HIV/AIDS."
While
the issue of gender inequality is often ignored or laughed off, experts say it
cannot be taken lightly in the context of HIV/AIDS, a disease that can be
transmitted through sexual contact and which is incurable.
Sex
workers, who have very little bargaining power to begin with, are usually
forced to comply when their clients refuse to use condoms. Back home, the wives
of these men too have no power to demand that condoms be used even if they know
about the risky sexual behaviour of their husbands.
While
the fight against the AIDS epidemic has seen progress on some fronts, women
continue to bear the brunt of it. Women make up 35 percent of all adult HIV
infections in Asia now, up from 17 percent in 1990.
REVERSING
A CULTURE
Maire
Bopp-Allport, head of the Pacific Islands Aids Foundation, contracted the AIDS
virus from her boyfriend around 1996. Today, she is a familiar figure in the
global fight against the disease.
"At
the heart of the issue is thousands of years of education to our males that
it's okay to think that women are there to simply serve them and do everything
they want. We need to bring a new culture where it's not okay," she told
Reuters.
"They
need to be able to think that the abuse of a woman is the abuse of their
daughters when their daughters become women," she added.
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to: wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com.
Thank you.