Group Sex, Trysts Without Condoms Fuel Raging HIV in Asian Men

Group sex and low condom use among gay and bisexual men are spreading HIV rapidly in Asia, making male-to-male intercourse the region’s fastest-growing means of transmitting the deadly virus, health officials said.

New cases of human immunodeficiency virus have surged in Asian cities such as Bangkok, where more than 30 percent of gay and bisexual men now have the AIDS-causing infection, said Frits van Griensven, who’s tracking the epidemic in Asia for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We’re really in for big trouble,” Griensven said at a meeting of health officials in Hong Kong yesterday. “There’s still time to do something, but we need to act rapidly.”

HIV transmission patterns among gay and bisexual men in Asian cities are starting to mirror those in the West as young men favor the Internet over bars and saunas for meeting sex partners, and engage in more unprotected sex more frequently with more people, said Edmund Settle, a Manila-based HIV-AIDS policy specialist with the United Nations Development Program.

Men who have sex with men, called MSM by researchers, may account for as much as half of all new HIV infections in Asia by 2020, compared with about 15 percent last year, according to estimates last year in a report to the United Nations.

“There’s this perception of gay men and MSM throughout the region that if you use a condom you don’t trust your partner,” Settle said in an interview yesterday. “Condoms are available. It’s getting gay men and MSM to use them.”

In China, about 5 percent of men who have sex with men have HIV, compared with 0.1 percent of all adults aged 15 to 49, said Wu Zunyou, director of the nation’s national center for AIDS control and prevention, in a presentation yesterday.

‘Not Afraid’

A survey of 18,000 gay and bisexual men in 61 Chinese cities showed HIV prevalence as high as 18 percent, Wu said. Infections are rising as more young men engage in group sex, sometimes while taking amphetamines. The Internet is now the main means by which Chinese men arrange sex with other men, he said.

“They’re not afraid” of contracting HIV, Wu said. “They perceive personal relationships as more important than any health issue.”

A total of 6,897 people died of AIDS in China in the first nine months of last year, making it the nation’s deadliest infectious disease, China’s Ministry of Health said in a report posted on the government’s Web site Feb. 17.

There may be about 10 million gay and bisexual men in Asia, said Massimo Ghidinelli, adviser on HIV and AIDS in the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific region. Still, Wu said he had “no idea” how many such men are in China, adding the number could be anywhere between 1 million and 30 million. That makes reaching them with measures to prevent infections difficult, he said.

About 5 million people in Asia had HIV in 2007, according to World Health Organization and UNAIDS data. That number may double by 2020, and 6 million households may be pushed into poverty by 2015 unless efforts to prevent new infections are expanded, the UN report said.