A new AIDS threat is rising in India’s numerous call centers, where young staff are increasingly having unprotected sex with multiple partners in affairs developed during night shifts, a top AIDS expert warned.
While India made great strides in bringing down its HIV infection rate, the promiscuity among “call center Romeos” is a great concern, Suniti Solomon, who detected the first HIV case in India in 1986, told an international medical conference on Saturday.
The UN, however, still estimated there were some 2.5 million Indians living with HIV and AIDS.
“India has reached a plateau of the infections,” Solomon told the International Congress on Infectious Diseases, which ended yesterday.
Her concern was the call centers, where many of the young staff worked at night to correspond with the daytime working hours of their American and European clients.
“They have all the money. They huddle together in the night. They are young, they are sexually active, so naturally they start,” Solomon, who runs an AIDS center in the southern Indian city of Chennai, said in an interview.
She said at least three or four call center workers visit her clinic every week to get tested for HIV because they are worried after having unprotected sex.
It was estimated that India’s call centers employed some 1.3 million people, mostly youth fresh out of school and colleges, earning a starting salary of 25,000 rupees (US$600) a month, more than a government doctor’s paycheck.
“You will see call center Romeos are a major high risk for HIV,” Solomon said.
There were no figures for how many call center workers were infected with HIV.
Citing confessions by the visitors to her center, Solomon said groups of young men and women rented apartments along the beach during the weekends and end up having multiple-partner sex.
“If they are having sex just among themselves, and all are non-infected it is fine. But if there is one person who has gone out of this group and brought in the virus, it will spread to everyone,” she said.
While the “call center Romeo” situation is a reflection of recent liberal values, India’s anti-AIDS fight is also hampered by society’s coexisting conservatism, Solomon told the conference.
She said this is evident in Hindu activists’ opposition to circumcision — which is proven to help inhibit HIV transmission — on the grounds that it is against tradition and religion of Hindu-majority India.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
RSS