Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - October 8, 2003
Aphaluck Bhatiasevi
Calling for HIV/Aids testing for couples, Susan Paxton of Australia-based Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/Aids, said a recent interview of 753 women in Thailand, Indonesia, India and the Philippines showed that they were often blamed for spreading the virus because they were usually the first ones to be tested in their family.
Even the vertical transmission of HIV/Aids to newborn babies is branded as "mother-to-child-transmission" and not "parent-to-child-transmission", she said, speaking at the Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health Conference attended by over 1,500 participants from 41 countries.
HIV/Aids testing among women is usually carried out during pregnancy or child delivery in most Asian countries where 16% of mandatory testing was observed among the people interviewed.
About 46% of women said the reasons for HIV tests carried out on them were not explained beforehand and 21% received no information after the test.
As high as 27% of women faced discrimination, particularly from health care workers. Women who were found to have HIV were often stripped of their rights, with 14% coerced into abortion or sterilisation and 31% advised not to have a child.
Meanwhile, another finding which reviewed 20 years of work on HIV/Aids intervention in Thailand showed that it reflected violence against women in the form of gender-biased reproductive health controls.
"Many women don't have control over their reproductive health and most interventions choose to violate the rights of women rather than placing controls over the sexual life of men," said Niwat Suwanphattana, Aids Network Development Foundation project officer.
HIV/Aids interventions, he said, failed to recognise the polygamous tendency of Thai heterosexual males.
He said such interventions have only led to a greater disparity of infection between men and women. The ratio of male-female infection changed from 9:1 in 1984 to 2.78:1 in 2003.
According to Mr Niwat, the first period of Aids intervention (1984-1990) focused on 100% condom use in brothels by focusing on risk groups like gay men, intravenous drug users and sex workers.
The second period (1990-1995) focused on campaigning for women to be good housewives, by raising more concerns on heterosexual transmission which focused on household settings, while the third period (1996-2003) focused on behavioural change by training young people about life skills and developing national policies in preventing mother-to-child transmission.
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