The results of a study released yesterday indicate that more than half of all woman surveyed rarely use condoms during sex because they believe they are their partner's only lover or believe their partners not to be infected.
The survey was conducted by the Living Care Association Taiwan (
Forty-nine percent of the respondents did not think they could be infected with HIV. Of the women who had once feared that they might be infected with HIV, nearly 70 percent did not go for a test and 30 percent said they might go to the hospital if they felt AIDS-like symptoms.
A specialist in infectious diseases at National Taiwan University Hospital, Hung Chien-ching(
"Nearly all the 45 female AIDS patients in my hospital within the past six years were infected by their husbands or sexual partners," Hung said.
"In addition, we usually find that they have become ill with AIDS when they first come to the hospital for an HIV test," he said, noting that women had little awareness of HIV and AIDS and often miss the opportunity for early treatment.
Hsu Hsu-mei (
According to the CDC, of 227 HIV infected females in November, 164 were married and 52 of their husbands admitted to having sex with prostitutes.
So far, 3,160 people have been found to be HIV positive in Taiwan, including 280 foreigners. Of the total, 2,653 were men.
In order to raise women's awareness of HIV and AIDS, the CDC appealed to women to use condoms during sex and called for more research on women and AIDS in Taiwan.
CDC statistics indicate that the rate of female HIV infection in Taiwan has increased sharply over the years. The infected ratio of males and females was 42:1 in 1989. By this month it had reached 11:1.
Sixty-one percent of infected females are between the ages of 20 and 39.
"They are of a child-bearing age, and that augurs ill for the potential for mother-to-child-transmission," Hsu said.
"Of 30,058 pregnant women who have had free antenatal HIV tests [sponsored by the CDC] since September, four have been found to be HIV positive," she said, adding that the infection rate among pregnant women had shown an increase compared with the rate three years ago, which was around three out of 100,000 people.
So far, there are seven HIV-infected babies known to have been born in Taiwan, according to the CDC.
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