Beijing - The rate of HIV infection has risen among women and gay men in some Asian nations but stabilized across the region in recent years, a United Nations report said on Tuesday. The proportion of women among the estimated 4.7 million people living with HIV in Asia rose from 19 per cent in 2000 to 35 per cent in 2008, said the annual report by UNAIDS, the UN umbrella group for HIV/AIDS prevention.
"In particular countries, the growth in HIV infections among women has been especially striking," it said.
Women accounted for an estimated 39 per cent of HIV-infected people in India by 2007, while the proportion of HIV-infected women in China also rose sharply, it said.
The report warned that female and male sex workers, and their clients, continued to run very high risks of HIV infection in many Asian nations.
It cited a study suggesting that "many low-risk women may be at considerable risk of HIV infection due to the high-risk sexual and drug-using behaviours of their male partners".
Across Asia, the annual number of new HIV infections fell from an estimated 400,000 in 2001 to 350,000 last year.
The estimates are based on a low proportion of clinically diagnosed cases. The discrimination, cultural and legal barriers associated with the disease means that many HIV-infected people in Asia are still undiagnosed.
In China, for example, some two-thirds of HIV-infected people have not sought treatment because of fear, ignorance and discrimination, UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe told reporters in Shanghai.
China and other nations still need to "break the conspiracy of silence" surrounding HIV/AIDS, Sidibe said.
"People are hiding themselves," he said, adding that "homophobic laws" were also preventing openness about HIV/AIDS among gay men in some nations.
The report said HIV infections were gradually becoming more common in mainstream groups in most Asian countries.
"Although Asia's epidemic has long been concentrated in specific populations, namely sex workers and their clients, men who have sex with men and injecting drug users, it is steadily expanding into lower-risk populations through transmission to the sexual partners of those most at risk," UNAIDS said.
"Notwithstanding its comparatively low HIV prevalence, Asia has not escaped the epidemic's harmful consequences," it said.
"The economic consequences of AIDS will force an additional 6 million households in Asia into poverty by 2015 unless national responses are significantly strengthened," it said.
Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu said sexual transmission was already the main mode of transmission in China, pointing to the need for greater efforts to prevent the spread of the virus from non-governmental organizations, civil society and the government.
UNAIDS said sex workers ran an "extremely high risk of HIV infection" in many Asian nations, where use of condoms remained low despite education campaigns.
One survey in China found that 60 per cent of female sex workers did not regularly use condoms, while in neighbouring Myanmar about 18 per cent of female sex workers were HIV-infected.
But the report reiterated UN praise for the Thai government's response to the country's early arrival of an HIV/AIDS epidemic as a "vivid illustration of both the power of HIV prevention leadership and the importance of sustaining a robust response over time."
"With visionary leadership and implementation of evidence-informed public health strategies in the 1990s, Thailand managed to arrest an epidemic that threatened to spiral out of control," UNAIDS said.
"However, after funding for basic prevention services was slashed as a result of the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s, HIV incidence subsequently increased," it said.
"Having intensified national prevention efforts, Thailand has again succeeded in reducing HIV incidence in recent years," UNAIDS said.
