Gay Partygoers Most Likely To Spread HIV

U.S. researchers stated that their prevention programs for AIDS will have its focus around the gay and bisexual community.

Half of all new HIVdefine infections in the United States consist of gay and bisexual men. Such young men who tend to indulge in binge drinking and are heavily into drug use are most likely to transmit the HIV virus to uninfected people.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer, an infectious disease specialist at Brown University in Rhode Island states that young people often take risks without thinking about the consequences. He quotes, “When one drinks or uses other substances, inhibitions are lowered, making people more likely to engage in risky behavior like unprotected sex.”

The researchers conducted a study over 200 HIV-positive men who were either gay or bisexual living in the United States.

The study found that fifty seven percent of these men met the criteria of “high risk HIV transmitters”. The term is used to define people who have engaged in unprotected anal intercourse over last six months with men whose HIV status was either unknown or was positive.

Three fourth of these men were white and more than half the men were college graduates.

The study also states that a quarter of the men participating in the program claim to have drank alcohol more than five times a day, at least once in the previous three months.

Sixty five percent of the men are into drugs such as methamphetamine. Also, twelve percent of these men have also been diagnosed with an infection that is sexually transmitted.

Mukesh Kapila, special representative of the secretary general at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, believes that HIV prevention must be specific to each generation.

In an interview Kapila quoted, “Within the community of men who have sex with men, the new generation would not have been through the 1980s and 1990s and they wouldn't have the high levels of awareness that the previous generations have. And (they have) the feeling perhaps that treatment is available, that maybe it's not such a fatal condition anymore. What it shows is the task of prevention is a permanent one. Every generation has to start (learning) again."

The study was presented at an international AIDS meeting in Mexico City in order to explain why the AIDS epidemic is starting to grow again among U.S. homosexuals.