Fridae

Taipei health authorities have revealed that they have started tracing the sexual partners of 15 men who have been found to be HIV positive or have AIDS after police raided an all-male house party at an apartment early this month. The men were among the 27 who were found in the Chienkuo North Road apartment.

The Center for Disease Control has since registered and monitored eight HIV carriers while the police informed the seven remaining men they had the virus.

This was the second major case after police busted a similar house party in January this year where police found over 90 men, including 28 men who are HIV positive or have the AIDS virus. Police also found drugs in the Nung-an Street apartment.

Health officials on Thursday also warned that sex orgies and drug use are speeding up the spread of HIV/AIDS among young people in the city.

Referring to the recent case, Lin Ting, chief of the CDC under the Department of Health, said the number of positive carriers of HIV virus accounted for 55.6 percent of the partygoers and many of them also suffer from syphilis. He added that there were also several carriers who were found to have consumed illicit drugs, according to a report in The China Post.

Health officials warned of disaster if unsafe sex parties become a popular lifestyle choice.

While Lin emphasises that the authorities are not "labelling the group," the center urges sexually active men to use condoms at sex parties as young males are at the center of the pandemic in terms of transmission, impact and the potential to curb it.
"From a preventative point of view, what we care about is their safety during intercourse, not their sexual orientation. We hope they can protect themselves and protect their partners," Lin said.

Thirty-seven percent of the 6,152 Taiwanese living with HIV/AIDS are gay men many of them in their 20s or 30s.

"A vast majority of young people who are HIV positive do not know that they are infected, and few engaging in sex know the HIV status of their partners," Tsai Shu-feng, the chief of the center's AIDS section told the Taipei Times.

According to the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Control Act, HIV-infected individuals who knowingly pass the disease to others face a sentence of up to seven years in prison although no one has been charged under the law since the ratification of the act in 1990.

Some health workers and experts however say that despite sex parties being major venues for HIV/AIDS infection, the authorities have failed to properly address the attitude and behaviors that underline the trend.

Health workers also criticised the procedures employed during police crackdown on the sex parties, saying that treating the partygoers as criminals does not help rein in the disease as those who are arrested at sex parties tend to plunge themselves deeper into drug addiction and reckless behavior.

"[Partygoers] feel ashamed when they are exposed by police and the media," said Zhuang Ping, counselor at the Taipei City STD Control Center. He criticised the role of the media in the recent raids as those arrested at sex parties were forced to squat down naked in the apartments - not for police interrogation purposes but for the media to take pictures.