Worldwide, rates of sexually transmitted infections among young people are soaring: one-third of the 340 million new STIs each year occur in people under 25 years of age. Each year, more than one in every 20 adolescents contracts a curable STI. More than half of all new HIV infections occur in people between the ages of 15 to 24 years. The sexual health needs for adolescent girls are generally overlooked, Stigma and vulnerability affects particular groups of men as well as women. Although men generally have more access to information on sexual issues than women, and more decision-making power regarding sexual behavior, Access to information, and treatment for other infections which facilitate the transmission of HIV and onset of AIDS, including sexually transmitted infections, are limited because of weak public health services, health workers’ negative attitudes, and the high cost of treatment.

If the adolescents are informed and thought about their sexual and reproductive health, they might take the decisions about it independently. But the physiological, behavioral and social factors that make adolescents more vulnerable than adults to STDs/STI. Seeing that girls have a large mucosal surface area exposed to infection and have not yet developed mature mucosal defence systems, the cells that line the opening of the cervix are particularly susceptible to chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV.

Social powerlessness, poverty and economic dependence contribute to the vulnerability of adolescent girls. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has been fuelled by gender inequality. Unequal power relations, sexual coercion and violence is a widespread phenomenon faced by women of all age-groups, and has an array of negative effects on female sexual, physical and mental health. HIV/AIDS infection reveals the disastrous effects of discrimination against women on human health, and on the socio-economic structure of society.

Usually, girls do not have the same educational and employment opportunities as boys, and they face family and societal forces for early marriage and childbearing. Early marriage and early childbearing are the norm in Bangladesh, although age at marriage is rising in all the countries mentioned. Finally, there is evidence that an increasing proportion of unmarried adolescents are sexually active.

Now a day, age at marriage is increasing, and this raises its own issues and concerns. Sometimes Later marriage increases premarital sex. Sex outside marriage is normally considered immoral and adolescents who engage in it particularly girls are strongly condemned.

In many societies, people from groups associated with high incidences of HIV infection – including injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, and commercial sex workers are subjected to a culture of fear and punishment when their HIV status is suspected.

Source: Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation

-Mohammad Khairul Alam, HIV/AIDS Programmme Consultant

- Ms. Muslema Khan Bulon -

- AIDS Researcher -

- bulon.email@gmail.com -

Nowadays AIDS, constitute a significant public health threat around the world. By the end of 2005, about 50 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS, 90% of them in developing countries. During 2005 alone, a total of 5 million adults and children were found to be newly infected with HIV, and in the same year, three million people died from HIV/AIDS - 80% of them Africans. In two decades, AIDS has killed almost 30 million people and orphaned over 14 million children.
An increase in affluence also has resulted in a rise in the number of men who visit commercial sex workers. HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh therefore depends on the conditions in the commercial sex industry, including the frequency of the incidents of men visiting commercial sex workers. Providing clean needles is also considered important because it decreases the spread of HIV from injection drug-users. It is also important to bring a behavioural change among commercial sex workers (CSWs) by promoting the use of condom.
The fourth National Surveillance helps to understand us, the on going sexual status in our society, we found, our hotel sex workers conduct 44 clients in a week; both of them clients are married & unmarried. So it is clearly that Premarital and Extramarital sex is increasing in our cultural. While, everyone buying sex in Bangladesh is having unprotected sex some of the time and a large majority don’t use condoms regularly. Of 500 injection drug users questioned in central Bangladesh during the surveillance, 93.4 percent said they had shared needles in last week. The National Surveillance also found a high prevalence of syphilis among female sex workers. The same street-based sex workers in central Bangladesh who had a 0.5 percent prevalence of HIV, for example, had a 42.7 percent prevalence of syphilis.
Women in Bangladesh are largely getting sexual experience through marriage and for the most part, premarital sexual contact is mostly confined to their future husband or lovers. “Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation” found, sexual behaviour among Bangladeshi women is changing. Adolescent girls may not remain in the traditional sexual confinement of the previous generations and casual sex among them is on the rise. This may encourage AIDS to acquire alarming proportions in Asia.
The opinion of AIDS researcher Mohammad Khairul Alam, about the cause of changing of human behaviour is “the mixed effect of urbanization and modernization has brought frustration in the man. For these two things people are forgetting traditional social norms, family sexual behaviour is changing, attitudes of peoples towards sex is changing very fast. Besides migration for jobs, an increasing number of women taking up jobs outside the home, a decline in the traditional joint family system, and conflict to global culture were considered to have contributed to this phenomenon.”
Globally, there has been a changing pattern of male/female infections. Early cases in many countries were concentrated in male homosexuals and injection/intravenous drug users. But as the pandemic has spread there has been a progressive shift towards heterosexual transmission and increasing infection rates in women. The reality today is that, globally, more female than male are now dying of HIV/AIDS, and the age patterns of infection are significantly different for the two sexes.
Gender analysis is crucial to understanding HIV/AIDS transmission and initiating appropriate programmes of action. Key to this is an understanding of the socially constructed aspects of male-female relations that underpin individual behaviour, as well as the gender-based rules, norms and laws governing the broader social and institutional context.

References: Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation, World Bank

In 2005 there were nearly 200 million international migrants in the world of which 95 million were female migrants (49.6 per cent). And Bangladesh had been the ninth largest human exporting country, long with Bangladesh some other countries including China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand have also been the safe haven for human trafficking.
In Southeast Asia, most trafficking victims are forced into prostitution, though others are trafficked for bonded labor, domestic work, forced marriages, adoptions, and more recently to work for begging gangs in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is a source country for human trafficked for the purposes of sexual abuse and involuntary servitude. Bangladesh is one of the countries in the world in which the rate of trafficking is very high. Because of the hidden nature of this crime of trafficking, reliable statistics are hard to come out. Despite efforts to check human trafficking at various levels, between 10,000 and 20,000 women and children are trafficked from Bangladesh every year. Girls from villages are trafficked, the majority of whom are teen-age who are trafficked for $ 1000 and are sold to brothels for sex work.
All over in Bangladesh, poverty, as well as the breakdown of traditional livelihoods, the lack of education and skills for female and children, natural disasters, the breakdown of families from political situations, the low social status of female and young girls, and gender discrimination contributes to the trafficking phenomenon. Lows complexity and poor enforcement of trafficking laws are also cited as factors contributing to trafficking in the area.
Traffickers were frequently from the country or India, and had links to brothels in India. In some cases parents or relatives sold women and girls into sex industries. NGOs' unverified estimates suggested that 50 percent of victims were lured to India with the promise of good jobs and marriage, 40 percent were sold by a family member, and 10 percent were kidnapped. During the year the government identified 26 high-priority districts as source areas of trafficking and established anti-trafficking task forces in nine districts of the country. Women and youth displaced from homes as a result of the insurgency were especially vulnerable to being trafficked.
As mention by AIDS researcher Mr. Mohammad Khairul Alam, “Trafficking & HIV/AIDS is interrelated, especially women and girls are trafficking for use of sexual industry. Most of trafficking girls would face several physical & sexual abuses. When a girl or women newly enrolls a sex industry, she tries to safe herself heard & soul, but most of the time they couldn’t free her.”
Women and girls trafficked to India are at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV/AIDS, while India is the second largest HIV/AIDS infected country in the world, and it is a neighboring country of Bangladesh, It is estimated that half of the female sew worker in Mumbai brothels who are under the age of 18 years have been infected with HIV. A recent survey in Bangladeshi track drivers by Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation, found that 80% track driver in Bangladesh have no clear concept of HIV or AIDS. But 90% respond it is a deadly disease. Bangladesh is a country rounded off three sides by HIV/AIDS bloom neighboring country India and the existence of the Bay of Bengal on the other side. Every day a number large of people cross border movement take place both officially and also illegally. Due to reason of that great chance to spread out HIV/AIDS in Bangladesh.

// Dr. Kazi Fatema Afroje //

// Mymenshing Medical College //

// Mymenshing, Bangladesh //

// Fatema@37.com //

Globally, most of the women migrants are engaged as domestic workers, carers and nurses of the sick, the children and elderly people. Approximately, half of all the migrants were from Asia in 2005 and throughout the 1990s many of the female migrants worked in unregulated sex industry fuelled by dire poverty, discrimination and unemployment in Asia. Sometimes domestic workers have been assaulted, raped, overworked. Many had been denied pay, rest days, privacy and access to medical services; verbally and psychologically abused and sometimes had their passports withheld.
Bangladesh is one of the countries in the world in which the ratio of trafficking is very high. An estimated 12,000 Bangladeshi women and children are trafficked every year into sexual exploitation in Indian brothels, and an unspecified number are victims of internal sex trafficking. Women also migrate willingly to Middle-east country to work as domestic servants, nurse, cooker, cleaner etc., but some subsequently face conditions of involuntary servitude because their passports and wages are withheld and they are physically and sexually abused by their employers.
Bangladesh is bordered by India and by the Myanmar. India shares 4,222 kilometers of its border with 28 districts of Bangladesh, and most of that border is open to traffic. Bangladeshi girls who are trafficked to India by organized networks usually end up in brothels in Kolkata or Mumbai. Many victims are raped by their traffickers or by the border patrol guards. Poverty, floods and cyclones, landlessness, other natural disasters, and dowry system, push people to search for opportunities outside the country.
Approximately 20,000 people are trafficked every year from Bangladesh because human trafficking has turned out to be the third most profitable but illicit business in the world after arms and drug trafficking. South East Asia and South Asia are home to the largest numbers of internationally trafficked persons estimated to be 2,25,000 and 1,50,000 respectively.
Bangladesh is mainly a country of source for trafficking in women and children. A reported 200,000 Bangladeshi women and children have been taken out of the country in the past 10 years. At least 20,000 Bangladeshi women and children are trafficked to India and Pakistan and to Middle Eastern countries every year. The girls end up in brothels in India or Pakistan or in Middle Eastern or South Asian countries.
As mention by AIDS researcher Mohammad Khairul Alam, “Trafficking is not only a problem of the victims, it also creates social problem and health problem. Thousands of adolescent girls are trafficked every year from Bangladesh, Poverty provides traffickers with people who have no option for survival. They trust the offers of work or marriage abroad, which promise security but lead them to sex trade. Sex trade has become vastly diversified. Traffickers can easily procure girls by pleasing with promises and hopes of better jobs. Girls from Bangladesh either migrate voluntarily or trafficked into foreign countries where they become pawns in the sex trade without any hopes of escape.”
In Bangladesh where poverty has already limited people's choices, gender discrimination against women in health care, education, employment and wages can leave them with very few options for supporting themselves. Poverty, unemployment, internal migration and natural devastating have increased the vulnerability of women in many fields.
Human trafficking to India are at high risk for HIV/AIDS infection, as India is the second largest HIV/AIDS infected country in the world, and it is a neighboring country of Bangladesh, It is estimated that 40% sew worker in India have been infected with HIV. A recent survey in Bangladeshi track drivers by Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation, found that 80% track driver in Bangladesh have no clear concept of HIV or AIDS. But 90% respond it is a deadly disease. Every day a number large of people cross border movement take place both officially and also illegally. Poverty and open border with India have facilitated the trafficking of Bangladeshi women and girls to brothels in India.

Dr. Dirruba Anam Muna

Sylhet, Bangladesh

MunaSylhet@37.com

• What Causes Hot Flushes at Menopause?


• Plastic Surgery and the Entertainment Industry


• Top 2 Ways to Look For Breast Augmentation Info Online


• Chinese Medicine for PMS


• Abdominal Hysterectomy: Recovery Time After Hysterectomy


• Breast Anatomy


• Breast Development – What to Expect


• Breast Development


• Parenting Tips – Buying Her First Bra


• Does Breast Size Matter?