The number of HIV carriers aged between 15 and 24 in Taiwan has been increasing every year, posing an increasing challenge toward the country's AIDS prevention efforts, officials from the National Youth Commission said yesterday.
The HIV incidence rate among those aged between 15 and 24 in 1989 was 0.0008 percent, but the proportion had increased to 0.2081 percent by 2002, commission officials said.
GROWING SEGMENT
By 2002, the number of HIV carriers aged between 15 and 24 constituted roughly one-fifth of all HIV carriers in the country, the officials said.
Ninety-eight percent of those found HIV positive aged between 15 and 24 said that they had become infected via sexual intercourse and most of them were heterosexual, according to the commission officials.
The statistics showed that sex education and gender relations were some of the most pressing issues facing the country's young men and women, the officials said.
SEX EDUCATION NEEDED
The officials quoted results of a recent opinion poll conducted by the commission which indicated that the average age for first-time sex was 17. The poll also found that nearly 50 percent of this group had taken no safe-sex or birth-control precautions.
Also quoting results of a recent survey conducted by the Ministry of the Interior, the officials said that some 24,000 young women aged below 20 and unmarried, had abortions in 2002, with about half of them using RU486 to induce early-term abortions.
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