BANGKOK, 22 February 2013 (Update) -The Ministry of Public Health is promoting the use of condoms, after finding that teenagers are 3-9 times more likely to contract HIV than an average person.
Leading the ministry’ s condom use promoting team is Department of Disease Control Director-General Doctor Phonthep Siriwanarangsan, who said the team’s objective is to encourage the use of protection among teenagers who often engage in unprotected sex. The ministry has recently found that 89% of teenagers do not carry condoms to use for the intercourse, which puts them at 3-9 times the risk of contracting sexually-transmitted diseases and HIV, compared to an average person. This findings put Thailand at risk of a new round of HIV outbreak.
In 2012, the accumulated number of HIV patients topped 1 million, 700,000 of whom have died. There were roughly 10,000 new patients in 2012; 80% contracted the deadly disease from having unprotected sex.
For 2013, Thailand is pushing ahead with a policy of resolving and preventing AIDS, in order to realize its goal of reducing the number of deaths caused by AIDS to zero.
