Cambodia risks new AIDS epidemic despite fall in infection rate

Phnom Penh - Complacency amongst donors and the Cambodian public as HIV/AIDS infection rates dipped were putting the country at risk of a fresh epidemic, a senior UN official said Sunday. The English-language Cambodia Weekly quoted UNAIDS country coordinator Tony Lisle as saying both his organization and the Health Ministry feared a fresh outbreak because although infection rates were declining, risk behaviors were not.

"Cambodia now faces a very real danger of falling into the same trap some of its neighbours did a few years ago. It's crucial for everyone to realize that it costs as much to stabilize an epidemic as it does to reduce one," the paper quoted Lisle as saying.

Lisle's comments followed a ministry announcement last week that the official national estimate of HIV prevalence stood at 0.9 per cent among adults.

That estimate meant that almost one in 100 Cambodians aged 15 to 49 years is living with HIV infection, but represented a decline from the last official estimate of 1.2 percent from 2003, according to a the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases website.

"Although HIV prevalence in Cambodia has declined considerably, approximately 65,000 Cambodian adults are living with HIV. New HIV infections, as well as deaths from AIDS among people with HIV infection, continue to occur," the government cautioned.

It said the recent decline was a long-term consequence of a dramatic fall in new HIV infections estimated to have started in the late 1990s.

"These programs need to be sustained to make a long lasting impact on the lives of thousand of Cambodians," the statement said. "Continued support from national and international partners is necessary to sustain and accelerate the national response to HIV/AIDS and to prevent a resurgent epidemic in the future."

Lisle warned against a false sense of security due to the new figures, pointing out that recent surveys showed that injecting-drug use was on the rise, and that although fewer men now visited brothels, a "sweetheart" culture of semi-long term but not monogamous sexual relationships had grown.

Around 60 percent of women in high-risk groups such as drug users who had a regular sweetheart did not insist on condom use, Lisle said.

"We could be on the verge of a new epidemic where injecting-drug users form the bridge of infection to the general population," he said. "With such risky behavior still going on, we need to strengthen our prevention programmes."