Since most men who buy sex are married or are about to get married, significantly ostensibly “low-risk” women who only have sex with their husbands are exposed to HIV, the report by the Commission on AIDS in Asia submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday said.

Pooling recent calculations from various Asian countries, the Commission estimates that upto 10 million Asian women sell sex and at least 75 million men buy it regularly.

Male-male sex and drug injecting add another 20 million or so to the number of men at high risk of HIV infection once the virus enters those network.

Unprotected paid sex, sharing of contaminated needles and syringes by injecting drug users and sex between men and men are thus the most important causes of spread of AIDS in Asian countries, the report said.

A portion of those men, particularly injectors, may also pass HIV on to the women with whom they have regular sex, which means that several more women are at risk.

The report ‘Redefining AIDS in Asia’ goes on to say that because relatively few women in Asia have sex with more than one partner, the chain of HIV infection tends to end once the wives and girlfriends among them become infected.