Rate of AIDS patients increasing rapidly
The rate of AIDS patients in the country is increasing rapidly and at present the average rate of increase is 35 per cent, heath experts said.
Among the truck and bus drivers and helpers, 80 per cent go to the brothels with floating sex workers regularly. About 20 per cent sex workers do not use condoms at all. Only 95 per cent of sex workers heard about the disease, 10 per cent never use condom, 5 per cent do not know about AIDS, 17 per cent knew that AIDS was a general viral disease, 21 per cent do not have the knowledge about the disease and 4 per cent use female condoms, According to the survey report of Allergy Asthma Environmental Research and Skin Care Institute (AAERSCI).
Dr MA Hasan, President and Chief Scientist of AAERSCI, said, “Two-third rickshaw-pullers and truck drivers never use condoms. For spreading AIDS, among risky population, 69 per cent rickshaw-pullers, truck drivers and helpers of heavy vehicles go to sex workers. Among the rickshaw-pullers, 75 per cent are married, while 52 per cent truck drivers and helpers are married. About 10 per cent female sex workers are also married.”
Addicts who take drugs by syringes were 9.4 per cent to 19.4 per cent, of the floating sex workers, 12.1 per cent to 29.8 per cent, female sex workers, who are living at brothels, 17.4 per cent to 40.1 per cent, among truck drivers and helpers, 7 per cent are sufferings from sexual diseases, including syphilis. A female sex worker meets 7 to 40 customers in a day, he added.
About 18.2 per cent residential students of colleges and universities in Dhaka frequently visit the female sex workers and 2.7 per cent go to the male sex workers and transvestites (hizras). Among them 64.7 per cent did not use condom. Of the residential students, 0.4 per cent takes drugs by syringes, according to the survey by AAERSCI.
The survey report also revealed that housewives, who are sufferings from female diseases and their husbands living abroad, 40 per cent are sufferings from sexual diseases and this percentage was the result of extra marital sexual relationships.
Dr MA Hasan said, “About 40 per cent unmarried teenagers and young men and women, who are 13 to 23 years old, are active sexually in the country. Among them, they have at least one or two extra marital sexual experiences.”
He also said screening system at airport or border transit points are very necessary when expatriates return from abroad. By this process, they could be examined and identified easily.
To create awareness among the risky group population who are habituated in extra marital sexual activities and avoid risk factors while exchanging blood, prevention of AIDS would become successful, a health expert said.
© Copyright 2003 by The New Nation
