CaribWorldNews, NEW YORK, NY, Weds. July 30, 2008: HIV continues to be spread in the Caribbean largely by heterosexuals having sex with prostitutes.

That’s according to the latest UN AIDS report. The report, which comes ahead of next month`s AIDS conference in Mexico, states that the main mode of HIV transmission in the Caribbean remains paid unprotected heterosexual intercourse.

Among female sex workers, HIV prevalence of 3.5 percent was found in the Dominican Republic, 9 percent in Jamaica and 31 percent in Guyana.

But sex between men is also a significant factor in several national epidemics. As many as one in eight (12 percent) reported HIV infections in the region occurred through unprotected sex between men, according to the Caribbean Commission on Health and Development. Unprotected sex between men is the main mode of HIV transmission in Cuba, where men account for more than 80 percent of all reported HIV cases and in Dominica, where almost three quarters (71 percent of the 319 HIV infections reported to date) have been reported.  A recent study in Trinidad and Tobago also found HIV prevalence of 20 percent among men who have sex with men. The scary fact also reported was that 25 percent of those also said they regularly had sex with women as well.

However, according to the report, high degrees of stigmatization and discrimination
against men who have sex with men and female sex workers make it difficult to assess the extent
to which HIV might be circulating among those population groups in some countries.

Meanwhile, young girls are also reported to be at high risk of exposure to HIV, especially due to the practice of maintaining relationships with older men, who, by virtue of their age, are more likely to have acquired HIV.

Overall, the report claimed HIV prevalence reached or surpassed 1 percent in the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. But the good news is that most countries in the region showed declines or stabilization of HIV prevalence, primarily in urban areas, whereas changes in semi-urban and rural areas have been slight.

Still, the report said that inadequate surveillance systems in several countries are making it difficult to gauge recent trends in their epidemics.

Latest figures show there are 230,000 Caribbean residents living across the region with HIV/AIDS, the highest HIV prevalence in the Americas. Of that number, 20,000 became infected with the disease last year alone even as 14,000 died from the deadly virus. With some 170 000 people living with HIV, Haiti bears the largest HIV burden in the Caribbean. Cuba’s epidemic remains the smallest in the region, with national adult HIV prevalence estimated at under 0.1 percent. AIDS is the leading cause of death in the Caribbean, in the 25 to 44 age group.