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The Vietnam News

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[Year 2001]

Vietnam reports explosion of HIV infection among prostitutes

HANOI - The proportion of Vietnam's prostitutes who are infected with the AIDS virus has rocketed over the past two years, social affairs ministry figures revealed Monday. The HIV infection rate rose from 2.8 percent in 1998 to 21.6 percent last year, according to the figures carried by the Vietnam Economic Times.

It is the second study in recent months to suggest an explosion of HIV infection among sex workers. A health ministry study presented to a regional conference in November reported that infection rates among prostitutes in the commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City had soared from 3.1 percent in 1998 to 15.9 percent in 1999. The Vietnam Economic Times report advanced no explanation for the increase, but last year's health ministry report suggested there might be a connection with rising intravenous drug use among sex workers. Needle-sharing among heroin users has long been regarded as the main factor in HIV transmission here.

Aid workers have long expressed fears that a rise in infections among the country's sex workers, few of whom regularly use condoms, could lead to an explosion of infection among the general population. The US government has expressed growing concern about the potential scale of the problem here. During then US President Bill Clinton's landmark visit here last November, Washington announced six million dollars in assistance to fund AIDS prevention work here. The Vietnam Economic Times also reported that the country's sex workers were becoming ever younger.

Child prostitution was on the increase in the country's vice capital of Ho Chi Minh City, the paper said. The proportion of the city's sex workers aged between 14 and 17 had risen from 14 percent in 1996 to 15.6 percent last year. Nationwide there was also a sharp rise in the proportion of prostitutes who were under 25. The 18 to 25 age group now accounted for 70 percent of sex workers against just 43.3 percent in 1996. Only 13,742 prostitutes were officially registered at the end of last year, the paper said, although it acknowledged that the figure was a gross underestimate. The paper claimed that the "real figure" was in the order of 40,000, to which should be added the roughly 70 percent of the country's 50,000 to 70,000 hostess girls in bars and restaurants who also worked as prostitutes.

"In some of the big cities, hostess girls pose nude to attract clients," the paper said. In reality, independent estimates put the number of sex workers as high as 600,000, more than during the maximum deployment of US and other foreign troops at the height of the Vietnam War. The paper blamed the explosion of prostitution inside the country on the sharp increase in the trafficking of Vietnamese women to neighbouring countries, particularly Cambodia, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The official media here regularly reports on the number of Vietnamese prostitutes working in Cambodia and the high proportion returning with the AIDS virus.

The Vietnam Economic Times complained that a growing proportion of sex workers were not selling their bodies for any pressing financial reason. "Alarmingly 50 percent of prostitutes ply their trade for reasons that have nothing to do with poverty and everything to do with laziness and a degenerate lifetyle," the paper charged.

Agence France Presse - March 26, 2001.