Over 300 adolescents, OFWs contract HIV in four months

MANILA, Philippines – More than 300 adolescents and overseas Filipino workers were infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in just four months, the Department of Health (DOH) reported yesterday.

The DOH said from July to October, 355 adolescents and OFWs were reported to the HIV/AIDS and ART Registry of the Philippines (HARP).

Of the 355, 122 are adolescents aged 10 to 19 years old. All but two of the adolescents got HIV through sexual contact; one was infected through mother-to-child transmission, while the other through sharing of infected needles.

Since 1984, the DOH has recorded 38,114 HIV cases in the country. And since 1984, a total of 1,358 adolescents were reported to HARP. Most of the cases or 86 percent were recorded from 2011 to 2016.

Seven percent of the total cases or 100 were children infected through mother-to-child transmission.

Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial said the DOH is working to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

OFWs, meanwhile, comprised 233 cases reported to HARP and all of them were infected through sexual transmission.

More than half or 58 percent of the OFWs diagnosed with HIV belonged to 25 to 34 years age group.

Ninety percent of the infected OFWs were male and many of them got the infection through male-to-male sex or having sexual contact with both male and female partners.

People who engaged in transactional sex accounted for 331 cases from July to October. Most of them or 96 percent were male whose ages ranged from 17 to 60 years.

To prevent further spread of HIV in the Philippines and other countries worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing for use of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP).

WHO country representative Dr. Gundo Weiler said PrEP can help prevent HIV infection among high-risk groups.

“We are facing a situation that is very alarming in terms of infections. So we need to look into methods that are available to prevent infections from happening, traditional methods as well as additional innovative methods,” Weiler explained. 

PrEP is an HIV medicine that is the combination of “tenofovir and emtricitabine” that must be taken daily in order to lower the chances of contracting HIV.

“It is basically the use of PrEP by people that are not HIV positive so if they get exposed to HIV, such as rupturing of condoms, there is an additional layer of support versus the infection,” Weiler explained.

Weiler, however, stressed that use of PrEP is not recommended to whole population, but only to high-risk and sexually active people.