Spreading HIV

Health Authorities Should Do More to Control Virus

It is a shock that a taxi drive who tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has had sex with dozens of women over the last six years in Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province. Health authorities are under attack for doing little to stop the 27-year-old man, identified as Jeon, from having multiple sex partners. Police arrested him last week for allegedly attempting to spread HIV.

Jeon's case only proved that the government has neglected preventing the spread of HIV, which causes the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Jeon was discharged from military boot camp in 2003 after being tested positive for the virus. Since then, a local healthcare center in Jecheon has monitored him for medication and prevention of transmission. It is regrettable that the center has done a poor job in dealing with the virus carrier.

To the dismay of the public, the center had only called him some 30 times in the last five years to see if Jeon was taking medicine as prescribed but lost track of him last July. What a poor monitoring and treatment system the center has! It was as if the authorities had overlooked the spread of the virus. What's more surprising is that Jeon told police that he did not use any protection while having sex with as many as 70 women.

Most of his partners were reportedly female sex workers. But they included housewives and others. Judging from the results of police investigations, Jeon seemed to have tried to transmit HIV to his partners intentionally. The real problem is that no health official or police officer detected his promiscuous behavior until he was caught for his strange behavior of stealing female underwear.

That is, the authorities have been caught off guard in the protection of the women who had sex with Jeon without knowing that he was HIV positive. Some of them were found to have had extramarital affairs with him. They deserve criticism for immoral behavior as well as punishment for adultery, which is criminal in South Korea. But it is not to say that the women are responsible for falling prey to Jeon. The government and the local authorities cannot be excused for their failure to stop his sexual spree.

For now, it is urgent to locate Jeon's partners to find out whether they have been infected with the virus. It will be much more serious if the partners had sex with others after they unknowingly contracted HIV. In 2002, two HIV-positive women were found to have sold sex to a large number of men. In 2006, a homosexual AIDS patient had made sexual contacts with seven homosexuals in ``revenge against society.'' But the health authorities have continued to sit on their hands without taking bolder measures to tackle this problem.

It goes without saying that prevention is the best way of containing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Therefore, the government and the health authorities should establish a firm preventive system before it is too late.

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