Sep 07, 2007

Sex and Risk a Question of Location

by Laura Starita

More than a generation has passed since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Since then much has been done around the world to decrease the stigma associated with sexually transmitted diseases in general and HIV/AIDS in particular. Still, much more work needs to be done to dissolve stereotypes that can perpetuate stigma. Namely, the misconceptions that men engage in riskier behavior than women, gay men in riskier behavior than their heterosexual peers, and single gay men are the riskiest of all. These stereotypes misinform the public and concentrate prevention dollars in the wrong places.

Hopefully, results from a Durex Global Sex Survey, jointly analyzed by Durex and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, and excerpted in Foreign Policy, will help in this effort. Survey results show no relationship among gender, sexual orientation or marital status and how likely a person is to engage in unprotected sex with a casual partner. Rather, the total number of lifetime partners and how often a person has had unprotected sex is often directly proportional, as often is the relationship between these two factors and contraction of a sexually transmitted disease. Topping the list in infection rates of all sexually transmitted diseases combined are the four Scandinavian countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand. An anomaly is China, for which the survey shows a low partner rate (three) and a relatively low tendency toward unprotected sex (33 percent), but a high rate of disease contraction (20 percent).

Such clear data can help focus prevention dollars where they are best needed. Still, analysts and policy makers should proceed with caution: Using behavior numbers to create a single national policy would be dangerous even in Norway, with its population of 4.5 million, concentrated in a handful of municipalities and defined by relative cultural homogeneity (though this is changing with the current wave of immigration). More so in China, where 1.2 billion people are spread over the world’s second largest country by land mass, encompassing dozens of subcultures and dialects - and behavioral patterns.

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