DOH: Central Visayas in top 3 of most number of HIV cases

ONE-FOURTH of the people who tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the country last year came from Central Visayas.

HIV is the virus that causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

“In 2010, 88 percent of cases came from three regions, including Central Visayas,” said Department of Health (DOH) Assistant Secretary Dr. Eric Tayag during a seminar on HIV and AIDS last May 19-20 at Estancia Resort Hotel in Tagaytay City.

The National Capital Region (NCR) accounted for 54 percent of the cases; Central Visayas, 24 percent; and Calabarzon, 10 percent, DOH National Epidemiology Center data showed.

Sex workers

This year, two-thirds of the new cases reported so far came from two regions: NCR (55 percent) and Calabarzon (11 percent).

Central Visayas contributed five percent.

Despite the relatively small number of cases reported in Central Visayas this year, Cebu City, which is in Central Visayas, has the highest HIV prevalence among freelance female sex workers (FFSW) and injecting drug users (IDU) in the country.

According to the Integrated HIV Behavioral and Serologic Surveillance (IHBSS) 2011, 5.5 percent of FFSWs in Cebu City are infected with HIV, while 53 percent of IDUs who participated in the survey were also HIV positive.

MSM

Among males having sex with males (MSM), Cebu City registered the second highest prevalence in the country, with 4.7 percent of MSMs being infected. Only Pasay City fared worse, with 5.6 percent of its MSMs already HIV positive.

Males having sex with males is now the main mode of transmission of HIV in the country, accounting for 77 percent of the 483 new HIV cases reported in the first quarter of this year.

“It’s not about being gay,” said Tayag. “It’s about being a male having sex with another male. It’s becoming the norm among the young males.”

He said some males who have sex with males don’t consider themselves gay.

At risk

According to the 2009 IHBSS, the mean age of first sex with a man for MSMs was 15 years old, with MSMs, both young and old, having one to two partners a month.

Although 60 percent felt they were at risk of getting HIV, more than half of the MSMs surveyed said they had had anal sex without a condom in the past 12 months.

Less than one percent of them, or just 0.5 percent, had ever had an HIV test.

There is still no cure for AIDS, the syndrome of opportunistic infections and diseases that develops as immune-suppression deepens among the HIV infected.

Prolong

Antiretroviral therapy (ART), however, has done much in prolonging the life of infected persons, said Dr. Ofelia Monzon, founding president of the Aids Society of the Philippines.

“ART just delays the replication of the virus. It won’t kill the virus,” said Dr. Rosario Abrenica, head of the HIV and Aids Core Team of San Lazaro Hospital.

Monzon said although some groups of people are at greater risk of getting HIV, “we are all at risk,” as we might need a blood transfusion one day.

From 1984 to the first quarter of 2011, 90 percent of the 6,498 found to be HIV positive got it through sexual contact, one percent (or 54 people) through mother-to-child transmission, and two percent (or 155 people) through needle sharing among injecting drug users.

Twenty people were infected through blood and blood products.

DOH’s Tayag said the risk of getting HIV through a blood transfusion in the Philippines is currently at one in two million.

“But if the HIV threat worsens, the blood safety of the country will be affected,” he said.

The screening of donated blood is not a surefire way to get clean blood because there is a window period, usually two weeks to six months, during which an HIV infected person has not developed antibodies yet and will thus test negative in an HIV test, though HIV is present and he can already transmit this to others. — Cherry T. Lim, Sun Star