Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
United Press International - August 3, 2007
A study of girls who were later repatriated found that 38 percent were HIV positive. The rate was even higher -- 60 percent -- among girls forced into prostitution prior to the age of 15, the report by Harvard School of Public Health said.
"The high rates of HIV we have documented support concerns that sex trafficking may be a significant factor in both maintaining the HIV epidemic in India and in the expansion of this epidemic to its lower-prevalence neighbors," Jay Silverman of the Harvard School of Public Health said in the report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
India has the third largest HIV/AIDS population in the world, with approximately 2.5 million infected individuals, India's National AIDS Control Organization said.
Silverman and his team said the prevention of sex trafficking should be seen as a critical aspect of preventing the spread of HIV.
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