The Indian Health Minister, Ms Renuka Chowdhary, has proposed legalising prostitution to control the spread of the HIV-AIDS virus. India has the highest number of HIV-AIDS infected people in the world. According to a recent UN report, there are between three and five million people in India infected with the deadly virus.
"Legalising prostitution is an important step to empower the sex worker, both male and female, to have safe sex," said Ms Chowdhary. Prostitution, she said, provided a service to society which has neither been recognised nor authenticated. Legislation would allow prostitutes to work under less exploitative conditions.
The health ministry has already started a campaign to contain a burgeoning population and provide protection against AIDS by encouraging use of the condom. India adds 20 million people a year to its population and is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2020.
Only 40 per cent of the 145 million in the reproductive age-group practise contraception. India started its family planning programme in 1952 but the 19-month "internal emergency" imposed by the late prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in the mid1970s severely jeopardised it because of compulsory sterilisations. Ever since, no party has dared to champion family planning work, considering it politically suicidal.
AFP adds:
Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong AIDS workers arrived at Beijing's main railway station yesterday morning to complete their distribution of tens of thousands of leaflets about the virus.
Helped by hordes of Beijing health workers dressed in white coats and caps, the team of 14 handed out brightly coloured leaflets to bemused travellers.
China's Health Ministry detected 8,277 cases of infection with HIV by the end of September, but officials warn that as many as 200,000 people could be infected.
"Generally speaking most people in Beijing are aware of the disease, and they are scared of it, but do not have any detailed knowledge," said Ms Shen Zhaoying, an official from the Beijing Office to Prevent Sexually Transmitted Diseases. "But out in the countryside, knowledge is very patchy. That is why this project on the train has been so important."
