Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - December 1, 2004
Alexandra Hudson

Almost all major roads running from Germany's borders into the Czech Republic and Poland are lined with brothels, staffed by young prostitutes mainly from former Soviet states, earning this area the title of Europe's largest red light district.

Many prostitutes are oblivious to the risks of HIV/AIDS or are willing not to use a condom for a higher fee, the overwhelming attraction for many clients, health experts say.

"These men need to be shocked... We must tell them the facts and the figures, how many people have died of AIDS and how they are putting other people in danger," said Waclawa Haake of the Belladonna agency which counsels prostitutes and spreads the safe sex message in the border town Frankfurt an der Oder.

Haake and her colleagues marked World Aids Day by distributing condoms on the town's bridge to Poland. They estimate up to 1,300 women are working just over the border.

"Prostitutes tell us up to 90 percent of their clients are German, many seeking unprotected sex. Until now we always gave them information in their own language but now we are providing material in German to educate their clients," Haake added.

But educating reckless sex tourists is no easy task.

"Men know perfectly well that the risk of infection is high but they just see it as a gamble," said Hanna Kosteczka, women's affairs spokeswoman for Berlin's Polish Social Council.

She says border zone sex tourism has boomed since the European Union's expansion eased access and authorities seem willing to tolerate it.

"Germans know they get a more exclusive service for a lower price," she said. "Tourists do their shopping then visit a prostitute... Some brothels now even offer normal hotel rooms where clients can then sleep alone afterwards."

EAST EUROPEAN EPIDEMIC

Many experts say EU enlargement may adversely affect public health due to wider migration and an influx of infections. EU nations were previously separated from acute health problems in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia by their eastern neighbors.

Germany could be particularly exposed, as the one of the more easterly of the previous 15 EU members.

The Robert Koch Institute estimates Germany will have 44,000 people with HIV/AIDS at the end of this year, during which 2,000 people will have become infected, mostly homosexual men. To date, 23,500 Germans have died since the AIDS epidemic began.

German Health Minister Ulla Schmidt said: "The HIV virus isn't going to stop at our door. We have to look with concern at the many Eastern European regions where the number of HIV infections has seen a shocking rise recently."

An annual report by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO) released last week showed new HIV infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia climbed by 40 percent in the past two years, particularly in Russia and Ukraine.

Ulrich Marcus of the Robert Koch Institute said Eastern Europe was in the first phase of a heterosexual AIDS epidemic.

"The effects of a syphilis epidemic in Eastern Europe during the 1990s were clearly felt in Germany, so it would be unwise to think we wouldn't be affected by the HIV epidemic," said the researcher of the Berlin epidemic monitoring institute.

New HIV cases have also been rising in Germany since 2001 as younger people become more complacent about safe-sex.

Criminal psychologist Adolf Gallwitz said Germany should tackle its 150,000 sex tourists with tougher legal measures.

"The government has a very negative attitude to initiatives which punish the men, but they would do more good than ritualised expressions of outrage, which come out every couple of months," he said.

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