Just in 2008, HIV/AIDS has continued to go from a population-specific disease, to one that affects "innocent" women. In other words, we know that sex workers are incredibly vulnerable, especially those in the developing world, but now its "just" women. Malaysia is a perfect example; in an area that is dominated by Islam, and where virginity before marriage and a general "ignorance" about sex is much valued in women, husbands and increasingly fiance's, are contracting the disease and bringing it home to their women. New and improved testing means that testing the general health of these women at routine medical exams is bringing out the fact that more and more monogomous women are suffering from the disease. Of all new cases in Malaysia, over 16% are women, which means at least 2 new cases a day.
Despite the private and public attempts to achieve greater equality between the sexes, there are inherent differences in this culture that make women more vulnerable to abuse and discrimination. Lack of physical strength, for instance, makes women more susceptible to rape and other forms of violence.
Studies have estimated that women between 25 and 49 years have slightly higher levels of vulnerability to HIV infection compared to men. However, between the ages of 20 and 24, they become three times more vulnerable.
According to the Malaysian Ministry of Health and Unicef report titled Women and Girls: Confronting HIV and AIDS in Malaysia, vulnerability to HIV infection among women and girls is often linked and determined by factors which affect and commonly prevent women from actively making choices and decisions about their lives. This is especially true of housewives who now out number sex workers with the disease 5 to 1. Sadly, many women who have it are never diagnosed, and many of the programs that once targeted sex workers do not reach out to wives and mothers, both because of their circumstances and because of cultural taboos that mean the women themselves are blamed, not their husbands.
Malaysia, of course, is not alone in this growing problem of innocent wives being infected; India was perhaps the first country to see this happen, when truckdriving husbands were going from one end of the country to the other, visiting street-side prostitutes as they went, and spreading HIV at an incredibly rapid pace.
Either way, it would seem that the disease the press called the "gay bug," in the 1980s, is now well and truly the "heterosexual plague" of the 2000s.
Last year, Oxfam, one of Britain's biggest charities, got a lot of flack for its great gift idea...selling "smart" gifts, which also gave to important safe sex work overseas. In spite of the criticism, they did it again this year, and it's been so well received, they ran out of stock. From their website:
Condoms
Product code: OU2625 £ 24.00
Due to huge demand for this gift, it's not currently available - sorry! Here’s a gift with a difference. Male and female condoms with educational materials to make sure that they’re used correctly to help stop the spread of HIV. Rubberly jubberly.
Delivery note: All Oxfam Unwrapped gifts are despatched within 3 working days by 1st class post. Delivery is free of charge.
Well, as Zimbabwe fights for its life, one has to wonder just what Africa's future may be. Though it has been overshadowed by the horrors of Cholera and other deadly diseases, AIDS is not going away on that continent and to the frustration of the hardworking AID workers, this disease seems to have a mighty ally in the Catholic church...still! Less that a year ago, Mozambique's Roman Catholic archbishop was once again accusing the West of trying to kill off Aricans...yes, same old same old! With condoms manufactured in Europe and emplanted with HIV 'in order to finish quickly the African people.'
The archbishop of Maputo, Francisco Chimoio, told the BBC last March that he had specific information about a plot to kill off Africans. "I know that there are two countries in Europe ... making condoms with the virus, on purpose," he alleged. But he refused to name the countries.
He added: "They want to finish with the African people. This is the programme. They want to colonise until up to now. If we are not careful we will finish in one century's time."
Medical specialists were quick to point out the obvious and that is that even if someone wanted to do such an insane thing, the virus could survive only very briefly outside of a host.
Logic does not seem to play a very big part in either African politics and apparently African Catholocism and the campaign to educate about the disease has been harmed by this nutter's accusations. I can't help but wonder why the Vatican doesn't put a lid of this guy, and others like him. In Mozambique, after all, 1/6th of it population is HIV-positive; 500 new cases are contracted daily.
But then, this bishop seems to be in good company. Elsewhere in Africa, South African president Thabo Mbeki doesn't even think there is a link between HIV and AIDS and has suggested on more than one occasion suggested that antivirul drugs are poison and do not help sufferers. And Gambia's president thinks that an herbal potion rubbed into patients' bodies will cure it!
Poor Africa.
When I was listening to a report on the not-new fact that many Bangladeshi garment workers - mostly women - make as little as 7 pence per day making our clothes(I was there 16 years ago and it was no secret then!), and in the next segment, how the Muslim world continues to blow itself up in the name of religion, I thought of...
Goalundo Ghat is grubby little town in Bangladesh, filled with long lines of trucks and tiny shops, just another truck stop in this not-always picturesque country. But down a minute sidestreet, there is another world, Daulatdia, the largest and newest brothel in Bangladesh.
A settlement big enough to count as a village in its own right, its alleyways have over 1,600 women and girls, where they live and sell their bodies. It's a successful spot because it sits right at the junction of two huge rivers, the Jamuna and the Ganges, which makes this a very busy place for truckers and others to catch a ferry. Trucks carrying goods from the west and south-west and back line up here for days at a time, waiting to cross the busy river, which is why this place does such a land office business.
While men wait to cross, they look for some "fun" which word-of-mouth has told them can be had in
this village-within-a-village, with its more than 2,000 rooms, each which are separated from one another only by cloth walls, sort of primitive versions of the one-hour "hotels" of Thailand, or the area American soldiers dubbed "Disneyland" during the Vietnam war (differences being, the "hotels" are not for prostitutes, rather randy office workers wanting a quick afternoon delight, and Disneyland was the product of a miserable war).
Late morning is busy for the women, and there are lots of taxi rickshaws waiting to take the men back to the riverside when they have "finished." The women say that they have no trouble finding clients and the lucky ones often make up to 100 taka a day; that's 75 pence or about 50cents. What it costs to buy two bottles of cola. The children - girls under 16 - can earn as much as 10 times that amount because they are "fresh."
About 300 of the prostitutes' children live inside the brothel with their mothers, ordered under the bed or outside when a john arrives.
Then there are the chukri, a sort of indentured servant, who often enter at about 14, fooled into working by their "boyfriends" who keep the money the girls earn, those who have been kidnapped, or those sold by stepmothers who don't want the expense of some else's child. Eventually, these women are allowed to buy their freedom, but what a price!
The cost of living is so high for these women - who are surrounded by shops that take full advantage of their prisoner-like status - that when the Bangladesh Women's Health Coalition offers safe sex courses, their promise of a bar of soap for attending brings the women in; they practice rolling condoms on a big plastic phallis and hear about what to look for to identify a "diseased" penis.
But, this does not mean that they are able to get all or even most men to use one, even when provided for free. About 60% of business transactions do not include condom use. Perhaps the saddest part of all is the women, when they get pregnant - and they do frequently! - in this most overcrowded nation on earth, say they always hope for girls so that they can put them to work at the age of 14...in the brothel.
This strictly Muslim nation has over 100,000 prostitutes.
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