Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - September 9, 2006
Apiradee Treerutkuarkul
Officials believe the reason the disease was infecting more married women was because they were engaging in unprotected sex with their infected husbands, he said.
More than 30% of the estimated 17,000 new HIV cases last year were married women, followed by the men having sex with men group (20%), intravenous drug users (10%), with the rest being teenagers and buyers of sex services, according to the Public Health Ministry's latest report.
Lack of abstinence, faithfulness and condom use (ABC) was the major cause of increase in the infection rate among married women, Dr Sombat claimed.
The finding should be a wake-up call for authorities handling the HIV/Aids prevention campaign.
It is now clear that the changing situation is creating new challenges for those involved in fighting the disease. Health authorities usually regard sex workers as the direct risk group. They have been promoting the 100% condom use campaign to prevent Aids and other sexually-transmitted diseases.
Dr Sombat said the ministry has also urged hospitals nationwide to run the Partner Notification project, which encourages married couples to have their blood regularly tested and promotes the ABC principles.
Under the project, five million condoms would be distributed to married couples by the end of this year in a bid to control the transmission of HIV between husband and wife, he said.
Nimit Tien-udom, director of the Aids Access Foundation, blamed the government's discontinuation of the campaign to promote condom use as a reason of an increase in HIV infections.
He said the campaign had been frozen over the past seven years and it should be revived to educate not only the high-risk groups, such as sex workers, but also the public as a whole, he said.
Mr Nimit called on the government to show its political will to fight Aids by stepping up sex education and the condom use campaign.
"You cannot solve this chronic problem by only providing anti-Aids drugs to the patients," he said.
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