Over half of prostitutes in Beijing not using condoms

Chilling news from AFP:

MORE than half of Beijing's prostitutes do not use condoms despite sexual transmission having replaced drug use as the most common infection route for HIV, state media said on Tuesday.

Just 47 per cent of the 90,000 sex workers in China's capital used condoms, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Fang Laiying, director of the municipal public health bureau, as saying.

Sexual transmission has also replaced intravenous drug use as the most common transmission route for the HIV virus for the first time in Beijing, accounting for 55 per cent of infections, the report said.

But the infection rate among the city's prostitutes was unknown as Beijing does not provide a testing programme.