not necessarily true.
i'd been picking my brain for ways to outreach to Asian American married women about the importance of getting HIV-tested during routine visits to the OB/GYN – without implying that their spouses may be practicing infidelity. but the only way i could refrain from "implying" anything is with the support of some hard facts. before today, i couldn't find any data that supported the idea that married women are not necessarily "low-risk" because they only have sex with their husbands.
well, UNAIDS held their 9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Bali last week, and a presentation that created a lot of excitement at the event was about the rate of HIV infection with Asian women in intimate long-term relationships. In a nutshell, the report says that (i added bold emphasis) "evidence from many countries in Asia indicates that most women are acquiring HIV not because of their own sexual behaviours but because their partners engage in unsafe behaviours. It is estimated that more than 90% of women living with HIV acquired the virus from their husbands or from their boyfriends while in long-term relationships. (Bennetts et al., 1999; Silverman et al., 2008)"
the full report & its supporting numbers can be downloaded here as a PDF: HIV Transmission in Intimate Partner Relationships in Asia
after reading the report, here are some of the facts that I myself found interesting:
- It is estimated that at least 50 million women are at risk of acquiring HIV from their intimate partners (Commission on AIDS in Asia, 2008). These women are either married or are the regular partners of men who engage in higher-risk sexual behaviours.
- Thailand’s epidemic has diminished but has become more heterogeneous (Over et al., 2007), and HIV is increasingly affecting people considered to be at lower risk of infection. About 43% of new infections in 2005 were among women, the majority of whom were infected by husbands or partners who had had high-risk sex or had used contaminated injecting equipment (World Health Organization, 2007).
- In a 2005−2006 survey in Viet Nam, between 20% and 40% of injecting drug users said that they had bought sex in the previous 12 months, and up to 60% said that they regularly had sex with a steady partner. Only a minority (between 16% and 36%) said they consistently used condoms with regular partners (Ministry of Health [Viet Nam], 2006).
- . . . while there is a societal toleration of extramarital sex and multiple partners for men in [Asian] societies (Roberts, 2009; Sivaram et al., 2006), women are generally expected to refrain from sexual relations until marriage and remain monogamous thereafter. Women and men have little accurate information about sexual issues. Multiple sexual relationships are often viewed as a symbol of masculinity.
