An estimated 50 million women in Asia are at risk of becoming infected with the HIV virus from their husbands or other partners, according to a U.N. report published Tuesday.
The report produced by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, known as UNAIDS, and its partner organizations said the HIV epidemics in Asia vary between countries but are fueled by illegal sexual relationship, the sharing of contaminated needles by drug users, and homosexuality.
Men who buy sex constitute the largest infected population group and the report said most of them are either married or will get married.
"This puts a significant number of women at risk of HIV infection," UNAIDS said in a news release.
According to a report last year on the global AIDS epidemic, an estimated 5 million people in Asia, and 74,000 in the Pacific, were living with HIV in 2007.
The new report, released Tuesday at the 9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Bali, Indonesia, and at U.N. headquarters in New York, said that by 2008, women accounted for 35 percent of all adult HIV infections in Asia, up from 17 percent in 1990.
UNAIDS estimated that more than 90 per cent of the 1.7 million women living with HIV in Asia became infected from their husbands or partners. In Cambodia, India and Thailand, the largest number of new HIV infections occur among married women, it said.
According to the report, at least 75 million men regularly buy sex from sex workers in Asia, and a further 20 million men have sex with other men or are injecting drug users.
UNAIDS said many of these men are in steady relationships and it is estimated that 50 million women in the region are at risk of acquiring HIV from their partners.
The report calls for stepped up efforts to prevent HIV infections for men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and clients of female sex workers.
PHOTO CAPTION
Boxes of ashes with names wait to be claimed by their relatives at a shrine at the AIDS hospice just outside Bangkok in Thailand.
Source: Agencies