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  • Title: Thailand. AIDS: an attitude problem.
    Journal: Womens Health Newsl; 1994 Aug; (23):13-5. PubMed ID: 12222514.
    Abstract:
    AIDS education for women in Thailand should not be limited to instructions on how to use condoms and communicating how HIV is transmitted. It should consider women's status with their partners and within society and encourage women to challenge those attitudes within personal relationships and society that deny them their right to self protection. Thai society believes it is a man's right to visit prostitutes and have multiple sex partners and that wives and partners must accept this right. Challenging the status quo leaves women open to risks. A prostitute who refuses to have intercourse with a client who will not use a condom could be beaten. There are 6500 women reported to be HIV positive in Thailand, but there may actually be 300,000. Oral sex and heterosexual intercourse are becoming the key modes of HIV transmission. The AIDS epidemic in Thailand affects women 3 ways: they are infected, they pass HIV to their children, and they are the primary caretakers of husbands, children, or grandchildren suffering from AIDS. Men do not perceive themselves as being responsible for transmitting HIV. Many Thais believe HIV's course through society to be: prostitutes pass HIV to male clients who pass it to their wives who infect their children. They do not ask who infects prostitutes. Thai men consider all sexually transmitted diseases to be women's diseases. Encouraging prostitutes and wives of prostitutes' clients to use condoms reinforces this belief. Just 18-30% of men who frequent prostitutes use condoms. Unequal social and legal status increases women's vulnerability to HIV infection. Women have been raised to believe that beginning a conversation with partners about sex means they are bad. The Access AIDS Counselling Centre helps women feel comfortable talking about sex. Thai women must work collectively to bring men's risky sex behavior to light. The sex industry would not thrive if women did not tolerate it.
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