Asia may have beaten the worst of the AIDS epidemic with condoms, but the region's growing sex industry highlights the need to promote wider usage to prevent new infections, World Health Organization (WHO) experts said yesterday.
Speaking at the start of a five-day conference in Hanoi they said the numbers of people in Thailand and Cambodia with HIV -- the virus that attacks the immune system and leads to AIDS -- had dropped steadily thanks to wider use of condoms.
However, a WHO statement said 800,000 people were still expected to die of AIDS every year in Asia by 2005 and the course of the epidemic depended on how heavily populated countries like China and India responded.
The sex industry in Asia was expanding rapidly and most commercial sex in the region is believed to be taking place without condoms, the statement said.
"If we use the lessons learned in Thailand and Cambodia, we have a real chance to stop the growth of the epidemic in this part of the world," Shigeru Omi, WHO director for the Western Pacific, said in the statement.
Gilles Poumerol, the WHO's regional adviser on sexually transmitted diseases, told a news conference that AIDS was currently killing about 1,500 people every day in Asia.
He said decriminalization of prostitution and drug abuse would make prevention easier by not driving high-risk behavior underground. He said the examples of Cambodia and Thailand needed to be followed.
Many parts of Asia are witnessing an increase in part-time prostitutes, working in bars, health clubs, massage parlors, karaoke bars, restaurants and hotels.
The WHO said these women included students who did not see themselves as sex workers at high risk and therefore did not insist on condom use.
The WHO said while the percentage of the adult population in Asia with HIV remained relatively small, the region's large population meant this translated into huge numbers infected.
Cambodia was the worst-hit country outside Africa, with 2.8 percent of its population aged between 15 and 49 infected, while Thailand, Myanmar and some Indian states also had rates of between 2 and 3 percent among adults, it said.
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