The Center for Disease Control will hold its big event for World AIDS Day this year in Taichung rather than Taipei, citing the unusually high rate of HIV infection in the city.
The event on Dec. 1 is the grand opening of Taiwan's first theme restaurant which features the promotion of condom use, said Lin Sheue-rong (
The cafe-restaurant is to be decorated with posters promoting safe sex. Many of the restaurant's items, such as napkins, will be printed with public health information, Lin said. Also, the center is considering offering condoms to distribute to patrons of the restaurant.
The center's sponsorship of the restaurant was inspired by Bangkok's Cabbages and Condoms, a restaurant offering diners a condom with their after dinner coffee.
Lin said the center decided to highlight Taiwan's efforts to control the AIDS epidemic with a press conference announcing the restaurant's opening in Taichung, because Taichung County and City have both shown a significant rate of increase in HIV cases from 1999 to last year.
"We feel that an awareness of the risk of AIDS needs to be reinforced there."
In the Taichung area, the increase of HIV positive individuals stood at 50 in 1999, while last year it was 91. The newly confirmed cases, therefore, increased by 80 percent in a single year, according to the center.
"Taiwan's average rate of increase for newly reported cases during the same period is about 10 percent, and the rate in cities and counties outside Taichung are all close to the average rate, Lin said.
Currently 398 of Taiwan's 3,422 HIV positive people are Taichung residents; 144 of those already suffer full-blown AIDS.
Lin said that scholars and non-governmental organizations believe that the booming sex industry in Taichung might be responsible for the area's HIV problem.
She revealed that an unofficial interview indicated that only about 50 percent of the area's sex workers regularly requested their clients to wear condoms.
Lin said that the center is waiting to see whether Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) recent pledge to wipe out Taipei's sex industry would force sex workers to move to other areas, including Taichung.
She said the center actually worries that a crackdown on the sex industry would only force its operations underground, leading to further difficulties in approaching sex workers to encourage their use of condoms for AIDS prevention.
Compared to many parts of the world, however, Taiwan is in fairly good shape.
According to the CDC, there is one HIV carrier per 5,773 people aged 15 or older in Taiwan. This represents an extremely low 0.017 percent of the adult population. According to the agency estimates, the rate of reported and unconfirmed HIV carriers in Taichung is one per 1,200 to 2,000 adults. This much higher rate nonetheless also translates into a remarkably low 0.051 percent to 0.075 percent infection rate for Taiwan's adult, and presumably sexually active, population.
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