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Published on September 19, 2007

Somyot Kittimunkong, head of the Aids Cluster Division, said he had been monitoring the risk behaviour for HIV/Aids among 13,429 Mathayom 5 students in 24 provinces. The survey found that more than 50 per cent of the sample group did not use condoms during sex with their partners. This could put them at risk of infectious diseases.

Most vocational school girls were suffering from gonococcal urethritis and that could expose them to HIV.

The incidence of infections, especially among teenagers, was increasing because the government's HIV/Aids prevention campaign had almost disappeared over the past four years, Somyot said. No more intensive campaigns were issued by the government to disseminate knowledge about HIV/Aids prevention to society, particularly the young generation.

The Public Health Ministry has also shut down venereal disease clinics, which were places in the community providing information about disease prevention to people living with HIV and also to teens. All of their work was transferred to public hospitals for budget reasons.

Now teens have nowhere to go to ask for advice when they have problems with sexually transmitted diseases or HIV.

"Most hospitals lack an expert who could counsel youths or even adults with HIV, so they don't have any correct information or feel confident in using condoms," Somyot said.

The ministry has launched an advertising blitz for the last two weeks of this month called "Yeud Okk Pok Toong" to convince people to carry condoms. But many complained about its content after it was broadcast.

Ladda Thangsupachai, director of the Culture Ministry's Culture Surveillance Centre, said the Public Health Ministry should be careful in sending its campaign message to the public about carrying condoms. If the message was not clear, it could lead to misunderstanding of what condoms were used for.

Sujittra Prongsang, of the Bureau of Vocational Education Standards and Qualifications at the Education Ministry, said society must understand that teen sex is not an embarrassment. Carrying condoms did not mean that kids wanted to have sex every time but it worked to protect them from disease when they had unintended and unprotected sex.

The Nation