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Published on December 2, 2007

Youngsters in Lop Buri province are in severe danger of getting the HIV virus and spreading it to others, Abbot Phra Udomprachatorn of Wat Phrabaat Namphu, an Aids hospice, said this week.

He said most young girls in the province lacked knowledge about the prevention of HIV infection.

This led them to become easily infected with the virus and most did not know when they were already infected. Therefore when they have sex with strangers without prevention it is easily spread to other people.

That's why the number of cases of new infections in Wat Phrabaat Namphu is increasing and most are at a young age, he said.

The Disease Control Department's deputy director-general, Dr Somchai Pinyopornpanich, said the disease remained the country's major health problem.

He said teenagers faced a high risk of catching HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) because many had sex to impress their peers and believed the disease was only spread via sex workers.

Somchai said a report on STDs and risky behaviour last year found that fewer than 50 per cent of youths who had casual sex used condoms, and the age they first had sex was about 15 - well down from the previous figure of 18 years old.

Meanwhile, a survey on Thai youths' knowledge about Aids last year found only 23 per cent of males and 26 per cent of females could answer questions about the disease correctly.

Somchai said just under 14,000 people in Lop Buri had acquired HIV this year, with 34 per cent of them being young women and housewives, who have the highest risk of getting the infection from their partner through unprotected sex.

The second largest group, at 24 per cent, are men who had sex with men, with 84 per cent of them contracting HIV from unprotected sex.

"Unprotected sex with their partners is still the main reason for HIV/Aids infections," he said.

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CORRECTION

Yesterday's 1A story "Dilemma for HIV teens in a relationship" carried the statement: "About 30 per cent of these are younger than 10 years old."

      The sentence should have read, "About 30 per cent of these are older than 10 years old."

We apologise for the error.