PHNOM PENH, June 4 (AFP) - Cambodia's female politicians turned on their male counterparts Tuesday arguing a legal focus on AIDS and women was ignoring promiscuous men who were largely responsible for spreading the deadly virus.
"Why should the law only be specific to girls and women?" asked female lawmaker Ly Kimleang during a heated debate on Cambodia's first legal effort to combat HIV/AIDS.
"Actually it's the men who become bored. They go out for sex with another women and and then spread the disease into their family," she added.
Cambodia is attempting to enact its first ever HIV/AIDS legislation aimed at promoting information about the disease and outlawing the sale of fake drugs which vendors claim can cure it.
However, critics argue the legislation with consistent references to young women and housewives was sexist and failed to take into account the spread of AIDS by men.
Ly Kimleang spoke on behalf of 14 female members of parliament, regardless of their political affiliation, and said women were victims of the disease spread by men and argued men and women should be written equally into the legislation.
For 2000, a survey by the National Center for HIV/AIDS, found 169,000 people between 15 years and 45 years were living with HIV, and more than 80,000 people had died of AIDS.
That represents a solid decline from some 184,000 infections in 1999, and 210,000 in 1997. However, critics have argued the numbers are skewed because AIDS vitims here are dying faster due to the high costs of treatment.
The figures were also rejected by the opposition leader Sam Rainsy during the current session of parliament.
"The numbers of people infected or who have died of AIDS are more than the numbers provided by the government," Sam Rainsy said. "I don't believe those figures."
He argued that more people died of AIDS in the countryside, which is an area the authorities had failed to count, than in the cities.
"Between the next five to 10 years I believe that more people will lose their lives from AIDS than the amount of people who died during the Khmer Rouge times," he said.
Up to 1.7 million people died during the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge reign through alleged genocide, starvation and illness brought on by forced labour.
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