Malaysia cannot promote condoms

Malaysia's health ministry cannot openly promote condom use to prevent HIV/ AIDS, fearing perceptions it is advocating promiscuity in the mainly Muslim nation, reports said Monday.

The ministry's deputy director for disease control, Jalal Halil Khalil, said the government understood that condom use prevented the transmission of HIV -- cases of which are rising in Malaysia -- but could not openly support it.

"We realise that we are an Islamic country and we have to do things carefully," Jalal told the New Straits Times daily.
The health ministry earlier this year warned Malaysia could face an HIV/AIDS epidemic with the number of infected people rising fourfold to 300,000 by 2015.

Of some 75,000 people with HIV/AIDS in a population of nearly 27 million, about three-quarters are intravenous drug users, but heterosexual transmissions are growing.

Jalal admitted not being able to openly promote condoms would render prevention programmes less effective, adding the ministry was relying instead on non-government organisations (NGOs) to advocate condoms.

"It may slow down the effectiveness of prevention. It is difficult to promote the open usage of condoms," he told the Star newspaper.

"We let the NGOs do the work ... we use different ways of communicating it or else people will think we are promoting promiscuity," he said.

Sex is a taboo topic rarely discussed in public in the conservative nation, while HIV/AIDS patients suffer from social stigma.

Malaysia last year embarked on a five-year plan to curb the spread of the disease, including needle exchange programmes for drug addicts, free antiretroviral drugs and drug substitution therapy.