Once-puritan South Africa holds its first sex fair

Mon Oct 1, 2007

By Paul Simao

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africans queued to learn about sex toys and pole-dancing this weekend, at the first sex fair ever held in a country founded by conservative Christians and still home to many sexual taboos.

The exhibition, modeled on a show running in Australia since 1996, would have been unthinkable 15 years ago when South Africa was still ruled by Afrikaners, the white descendants of the original, largely Puritan Dutch and French settlers.

During the apartheid era, customs officials not only confiscated pornography brought from abroad by travelers, but sometimes detained those trying to import it. Strip clubs did not exist and handcuffs, though abundant, were not fur-lined.

The end of white minority rule in 1994 and the establishment of a new constitution -- generally considered one of the most liberal in the world -- unleashed a torrent of hard-core porn. Sex shops and strip clubs blossomed.

Although authorities tolerate the lifestyle, it remains one that few South Africans openly discuss or admit to supporting.

Meanwhile, South Africa has one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics.

An estimated 12 percent of its 47 million people are infected with HIV, most of them black. Sex is the main channel of transmission in a culture where male dominance is rarely challenged and promiscuity often tolerated.

Each day about 1,000 people die from AIDS and another 1,500 contract the virus.

Amid the racy lingerie, pornographic DVDs and exotic sex toys, the Johannesburg "Sexpo SA" made room for a handful of health advocacy groups to set up stands, including the LoveLife Trust, the national HIV prevention program for young people.

Silas Howarth, the 28-year-old South African who organized the exhibition, said around 40,000 people paid the 89 rand ($13) admission to the fair. He said there were plans to hold similar events in coming months in Durban and Cape Town.

INDONESIA: Female condom programme falters

Photo: Hera Diani/IRIN

Some women are intimidated by the large size of female condoms, but their relatively high cost and problems with distribution and supply have also hampered the government's attempts to promote them.

JAKARTA, 28 August 2007 (PlusNews) - Ningsih [not her real name], 22, was taken aback when she was handed a pack of two female condoms in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, but was even more surprised when she opened one. Measuring 17cm long and 7cm in diameter with a sponge attached inside, the female condom is indeed large compared to a male condom.

"My, it's so huge. Will it be painful using it?" asked the self-professed freelance sex worker, who was hanging out at a sidewalk stall in the Pramuka area of East Jakarta, a well known pick-up spot.

She told IRIN/PlusNews she was not willing to try the female condom; she was fine with a tri-monthly contraceptive injection, which kept her from getting pregnant.

What about sexually transmitted infections (STIs)? "I heard condoms might prevent that, but most of the clients don't want to use them, and I don't dare to insist, although I sometimes provide them," she said. "If a client ejaculates inside me I wash with Betadine," she added, referring to a popular feminine hygiene product.

INDONESIA: Cheap sex, high risk - the challenge of AIDS prevention

Photo: IRIN

Safer sex message needs ears to listen

JAKARTA, 24 September 2007 (PlusNews) - We were kerb-crawling for sex workers near the railway station in the grimy Cipinang district of Jakarta, Indonesia's sprawling capital, with Endang Supriyati providing a running commentary from the back seat of the car.

"There, do you see those women there, sitting next to the drink vendors?" said Supriyati, project manager for Yayasan Bandung Wangi, a local association that provides HIV/AIDS information and condoms to women working the streets in the eastern suburbs of Jakarta.

"They're sex workers? They look like they're selling drinks."

"No, they're sex workers," said Supriyati, pointing to women dressed in nondescript jeans and t-shirts; waiting, bored, among the night-time pavement traders along the traffic-choked main road.

"Can we get out and talk to them?"

"No," responded Supriyati, 22, who was having second thoughts about the evening's plan. "They'll ask, 'Who are you bringing, what do you want?'." Her concern was that if our voyeurism was spotted and perceived as snooping, it would ruin the relationship she has built with the women.

Selling sex is technically not a crime in the world's most populous Muslim country, but soliciting, pimping and procuring are. Indonesia's sex industry, although smaller that that of other South East Asian nations, still reportedly rakes in the equivalent of somewhere between 0.8 percent and 2.4 percent of the gross domestic product.

The previous authoritarian regime had encouraged designated "brothel complexes" in an attempt to regulate the sex trade. In the last 10 years, the rise of populist Islamic parties under Indonesia's new democratic order has brought the closure of established red-light areas by conservative local councils, wary of being seen as encouraging prostitution.

A booming sex industry

In spite of the new piety, swarms of massage parlours, karaoke bars and nightclubs have opened, cashing in on Indonesia's economic boom. They discreetly offer sex to better-healed punters, but in areas like Cipinang there is no façade. From the kerbside to a nearby alleyway, or shacks by the railway line - the only privacy an industrial rate of intercourse can afford - a streetwalker would be hard-pressed to charge more than US$1.50 for a quick round.

That sad fact undermines the advocacy efforts of activists like Supriyati: in a country where condoms are not popular and sex is cheap, market forces mean men "get sex the way they want it".

"The problem on the streets is that you have to compete [for clients]," said Supriyati. Insisting on condoms would not only be bad for business, but would "suggest the sex worker is HIV-positive". The harsh reality is that 23 percent of sex workers are living with the virus, according to the National AIDS Commission (NAC).

By the standards of the region, Indonesia has a serious HIV problem. In the eastern province of Papua it has become a generalised epidemic, with prevalence at 2.4 percent. In the rest of the country it is yet to break out of the sub-populations of injecting drug users (IDUs), prisoners and sex workers; but these subcultures are expanding as a result of lopsided economic growth.

"Two things force girls into this industry: poverty and lack of opportunity," said Supriyati. Although she must have told the story many times before, she cried when she remembered how her father had sold her, at the age of 12, to settle his debts to an aunty who was running a brothel in east Jakarta. "If he wasn't poor, he wouldn't have done it," she insisted.

Photo: Obinna Anyadike/IRIN

Recovering heroin addict - drug addiction adds to the risk

But working the upmarket bars and clubs can also be lucrative, and there's a chance of finding a husband among the expatriate workers that hang out at the pubs of the big hotels. "It is often assumed that all sex workers join the industry under duress because they lack other employment opportunities ... But the data suggests that many women in the booming economies of East and South East Asia choose sex work because it can pay comparatively well," said a report by the Monitoring AIDS Pandemic Network (MAP), a group of internationally recognised experts.

NAC deputy secretary Kemal Siregar told IRIN/PlusNews that regular condom use among sex workers was between 30 percent and 40 percent. Three-year-old surveillance data among brothel-based workers suggested condom use of around 15 percent (compared to almost 98 percent in the Thai capital, Bangkok). Worse still, just under half of all clients buying sex in Indonesia were deemed "high-risk": truck drivers, sailors and port workers.

If safer sex has been a hard sell among female sex workers, male and transgender prostitutes are in a neglected league of their own. "Almost everywhere it has been measured, condom use in commercial sex between men and women is consistently higher than condom use in commercial sex between men, even though sex between men carries a far higher risk of HIV transmission," the MAP study noted.

Sex and drugs

The use of putau - low-grade heroin - has exploded over the last 10 years, adding a further dimension of risk. It is typically injected, often with needles shared by many addicts, speeding the potential rate of HIV transmission. The medical technician in charge at a small government-run methadone programme in east Jakarta told IRIN/PlusNews that 86 percent of the former IDUs who were tested this year were HIV-positive.

Addicts sell and buy sex, and the barrier between those sexual networks and the rest of society is highly permeable. "I've noticed that a lot of parents of young men who are drug users are encouraging them to marry early, to change them. But the fact is that they infect their wives and children," said NAC secretary Nafsiah Mboi.

Islamic leaders are wrestling with the issue of condom use. "We agree condoms should be in red-light areas, but it should be sex workers that buy them; they should not be for everyone, like students for example," was the less than ringing endorsement of Aelhi Laksono, an outreach officer at the Angung Sunda Kelepa mosque in Jakarta.

"The figures show that [HIV prevalence] has nothing to do with good or bad people; a certain percentage of the population will engage in high-risk behaviour, and from them it will enter into the general population," Mboi responded. "The people that don't care about abstinence or being faithful need condoms."

Supriyati acknowledged that even her group, Indonesia's only advocacy organisation made up of former sex workers, has struggled to get its message across. In her depressing assessment, "Until they get infected, Indonesian people will not realise how important safe sex is."

AIDS Vaccine Fails, So Merck Is Ending Study

Associated Press
Saturday, September 22, 2007; A08

TRENTON, N.J., Sept. 21 -- A promising experimental AIDS vaccine failed to work in a large international test, leading the developer to halt the study.

Merck & Co. said Friday that it is ending the enrollment and vaccination of volunteers in the study, which was partly funded by the National Institutes of Health.

It was a high-profile failure in the daunting quest to develop a vaccine against AIDS. Merck's vaccine was the furthest along and was closely watched by experts in the field.

Officials at the company said 24 of 741 volunteers who got the vaccine in one segment of the experiment later became infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In a comparison group of volunteers who got dummy shots, 21 of 762 participants also became infected.

Michael Zwick, an HIV researcher at Scripps Research Institute, said it is too soon to know whether other vaccines using the same strategy would also fail. "It's par for the course in the HIV field," he said of the Merck result.

The participants were all free of HIV at the start and at high risk for contracting the virus: Most were homosexual men or female sex-workers. Merck said all were repeatedly counseled about how to reduce their risk of HIV infections, including condom use.

In a statement, the NIH said a data safety monitoring board, reviewing interim results, found that the vaccine did not prevent infection or limit the severity of the disease "in those who become infected with HIV as a result of their own behaviors that exposed them to the virus" -- another goal of the study.

Pakistan: Roadside Dentists Pose HIV, Hepatitis Threat

PAKISTAN: Roadside dentists pose HIV, hepatitis threat

Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN

Roadside dentists heighten the risk of spreading HIV

LAHORE, 18 September 2007 (PlusNews) - Holding a chunk of ice wrapped in a handkerchief firmly to his right cheek, Saleem Jawad, 34, looks rather pleased with himself. From time to time he turns away to spit out a stream of red blood, before sipping from a glass of cold water beside him.

Saleem, a car mechanic, has just had a molar removed in Lahore, capital of Pakistan’s eastern Punjab Province. The roadside dentist, Siraj Saeed, who performed the task, has the extracted tooth in a steel bowl next to an array of instruments spread out on a small, stained mat where he receives and treats his patients.

"The problem has gone now. I will be able to sleep properly and eat again in a few hours," Jawad told IRIN/PlusNews.

But while the roadside tooth removal - carried out without anesthetic and with only the most primitive, unsterilised tools - was obviously painful, there could be dire consequences for those who use the services of roadside dentists.

Recent studies in Pakistan have shown that roadside barbers, dentists and doctors are responsible for the rapid spread of diseases such as hepatitis, as well as HIV/AIDS.

"When the same instruments are used on one patient after another, and only dipped in a pail of water to clean them, there is an immense danger of passing on all kinds of disease, including HIV," said Fahd Anwar, a Pakistani dentist based in the USA.

Dr Anwar, who is considering moving back to Pakistan, cited an acute shortage of qualified practitioners - effectively encouraging such practices to thrive.

Shortage of qualified dentists

According to Pakistan government figures for 2006, there were 6,761 dentists in the country for a population of at least 155 million - roughly one dentist for every 23,000 patients.

This ratio had improved somewhat over the past decade, but the number of qualified practitioners remained dismally low.

This also means fees charged by trained dentists at private clinics tend to be high, while government medical facilities are often poor and involve long waiting periods.

"I know people say one can get sick by visiting roadside dentists. I have seen a programme on TV about this, and something about boiling instruments," said Jawad.

When the same instruments are used on one patient after another, and only dipped in a pail of water to clean them, there is an immense danger of passing on all kinds of disease, including HIV.

But he, and Siraj Saeed's next patient, Umar Gul, from Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, both agree: "People like us cannot afford to go to the fancy clinics where qualified doctors work”.

Roadside dentists charge between eight US cents and $3 for their services, while a visit to a private dentist will cost more than $8. Even treatment at public sector facilities often incurs larger costs.

Such costs are beyond the means of many people in Pakistan who earn less than $100 a month.

As a result, thousands of people each year visit roadside practitioners, who usually depend on lessons passed on from elders or simply first-hand experience, for their expertise. Moreover, most have little or no awareness about the need for hygiene, let alone sterilisation or the dangers of HIV/AIDS.

"These things are in Allah's hands; we do what we can," says Saeed. "I wash my tools with soap each evening."

Hepatitis, HIV/AIDS

But with the prevalence rates for hepatitis stated by the Pakistan Medical Association to be at least 11 percent and rising, such practices also play an inevitable role in the spread of the disease, which claims hundreds of lives each year, as well as HIV, say specialists.

Pakistan is now ranked in the “concentrated epidemic” stage of HIV/AIDS, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Pakistan's National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) officially confirms only 3,198 HIV/AIDS cases across the country, but NACP experts concede the "number of sufferers could be higher".

More on HIV in Pakistan

HIV/AIDS will not go away if you ignore it

Lonely drivers face HIV/AIDS threat

Taboo heightens risk for male sex workers

Drug injecting refugees vulnerable to HIV infection

Speaking to IRIN/PlusNews, Naveeda Shabbir at the NACP said prevalence among the general population was below 0.1 percent, but added there was a higher prevalence among specific populations, most prominently injecting drug users (IDUs).

According to WHO, the number of HIV-positive people in Pakistan could be as high as 85,000.

Epidemics have been reported among IDUs in the town of Larkana in Sindh Province and also in other major cities. The high prevalence of sexually transmitted infections, the large number of female and male sex workers, inadequate checks on blood transfusions and high levels of illiteracy and lack of awareness about AIDS also place Pakistan at high risk.

Following a month-long anti-AIDS campaign, the NACP country director, Asma Bokhari, said that in several Punjab districts, the re-use of syringes was found to be a major cause of the spread of the virus, and that "unsafe medical practices" posed a grave risk.

Yet despite this, across Lahore, and other major cities in Pakistan, dentists - as well as barbers who traditionally also lance boils, ear doctors and other quacks - continue to carry on their unsafe practices.

Their numbers are unknown but it is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. To date, campaigns to tackle such unsafe practices have failed to achieve any results, despite the obvious risks.

Kenya: Muslim Opposition to Condoms Limits Distribution

Photo: IRIN

Muslim leaders say promoting condoms is tantamount to promoting adultery

MANDERA, 17 September 2007 (PlusNews) - The strong anti-condom stance of religious leaders in northern Kenya means few people there are using them and traders are refusing to stock them, which AIDS activists warn is jeopardising the fight against the pandemic.

"I will never sell condoms in my shop; it is like promoting adultery and operating a brothel," Sharrif Mohamed, who owns a shop in Isiolo, Eastern Province, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Most traders in the mainly Muslim northeastern part of the country have refused to stock condoms, which are usually only available at government health centres.

Zamzam, a single mother of three in Garissa, a town North Eastern Province, dismissed condoms as "a thing for the prostitutes", saying, "I use my brain and intelligence when I want to sleep with a man, and can tell who is sick [with HIV/AIDS]; I am not a prostitute to use it." This level of ignorance is common across the region, where literacy levels are the lowest in the country.

"The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a curse and punishment because people have engaged in immoral acts and offended Allah [God]," Maalim Hussein Mohamud, a teacher at a 'madrassa', or Islamic school, in Mandera, near the Somali border, told IRIN/PlusNews. "They have to repent, observe religious teaching and not use condoms."

Mohamud said the only way to prevent the viral infection was to observe religious teachings, abstain from 'illegal' sexual acts and avoid the use of condoms.

"Our position is very clear: we shall never support the use of condoms; Muslims must shun acts that will endanger their lives. To be safe [from HIV], youths must pray five times daily, fast, and refrain from looking at women; extramarital affairs must be avoided and women must dress decently," he insisted.

Noor sheikh, who works at the government's HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infection control programme in North Eastern Province, said stiff opposition to the use of condoms was proving to be a hindrance to HIV prevention. "Our region has the lowest use of condoms in the country," he said. "Of course it is a factor responsible for many cases of infections."

Some activists have complained that the government has not done enough to educate the local population about condom use, particularly in rural areas, and it was also often very difficult to obtain condoms.

"Many youths are informed about the use of condoms, but have said they are not available in remote parts of the region," said Margaret Leshore, of the Samburu Women's Empowerment Programme, a non-governmental organisation advocating women's rights.

The condom is one of the main HIV prevention strategies employed by the government, and free condoms are available at most health centres around the country.

Although northern Kenya has some of the country's lowest prevalence rates, concerns have been raised about low awareness of the pandemic and the region's continued resistance to condom use.

Molding the Ideal Islamic Citizen

Polaris

CULTURE BLEND Islamic strictures met Persian love of pleasure in a Tehran shop in 2005 when a head scarf was pulled back to show some hair.

Eric Grigorian / Polaris

PUBLIC DISPLAY Sexual pleasure is encouraged for newlyweds; when fingers touch in public, wedding rings can avert disapproval.

From the New York Times
By Michael Slackman"
September 9, 2007

TEHRAN

THE instructor held up an unfurled green condom as she lectured a dozen brides-to-be on details of family planning. But birth control was only one aspect of the class, provided by the government and mandatory for all couples before marriage. The other was about sex, and the message from the state was that women should enjoy themselves as much as men and that men needed to be patient, because women need more time to become aroused.

Full article...