Failure to Use Condoms Has Placed Them at Risk
Businessmen with great mobility for his work and money to paying a prostitute for non-use of condom, China constitute a new group affected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the experts reported today.
The male members of 5 percent of the population with higher incomes and spend more than five days a month away from home, are 33 percent more likely to use the sexual services of prostitutes, according to survey results released today by Xinhua.
The group may also be a ready entry of HIV in major Chinese cities through sexual relationships with their wives wealthy travelers, most of whom are unaware of the infection.
According to the director of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Futures Group, Tim Manchester, who works in preventing the spread of AIDS in China, “it is a bridge population not yet studied.”
One possible scenario for the transmission of HIV is the businessman who does not use condoms and even pay extra to the prostitute who ignores risk, but you may be infected without knowing it.
The male will pass HIV to his wife, who continues his life in total ignorance of the condition being treated, as most of the infected population in China, said Manchester.
According to an AIDS specialist at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, was quoted by Xinhua, the number of infections continues to increase each year in China and Shanghai for example, 239 new cases were detected in 2004 compared to 100 in 2002.
“With about 10,000 cases in Shanghai, the situation is not good, because besides the number of undetected cases is increasing, mainly through sexual intercourse,” said the expert.
The specialist noted the difference in route of infection in Shanghai, the economic capital of China, located on the east coast, and in other western or southern provinces such as Sichuan and Yunnan, which is higher by injecting drug use.
Earlier in China, the biggest spread was due to donations and blood transfusions.
Condom use in China is still common and prostitutes can earn 60 percent more for their services without it, according to the UN agency on AIDS (UNAIDS), which amounted to 20 percent of the six million women in prostitution without a condom.
They and migrant workers between provinces are now so vulnerable groups as they were two decades ago poor peasants who sold their blood and were main source of spread of HIV in the center of the country.
“But the migrants are, in general, money to pay for the services of a prostitute, and after a hard day's work they want to eat, shower and sleep,” said Manchester.
“However, business men after long long hours at dinners and alcohol with colleagues visit massage parlors, karaoke bars or establishments frequented by prostitutes,” he added.
The expert stressed the difficulty of investigating the group to prevent spread of AIDS, since “not on the radar of anyone” and the government only knows the consequences of infection by health figures.
According to a draft Businnes Global Coalition on China, the search for solutions must rely on companies to protect their privacy on the evidence
