Premarital sex without condoms high in AP: Damayanti

Hyderabad, Mar 5 (UNI) Andhra Pradesh, one of the six states in the country where HIV/AIDS has assumed epidemic proportions, is finding promotion of condom use a big challenge among young people, who tend to have premarital sex, according to State AIDS Control Society Project Director K Damayanti.

A survey conducted in the colleges of the State had proved that the findings of a census in the Delhi Public School on premarital sex were not to be seen in isolation, she said yesterday, while participating in a workshop on ''Workplace policy and interventions on HIV/AIDS''.

The girls, who were interviewed by an NGO to understand the gravity of the situation in the state asked ''Do married women ask their husbands to use condoms doubting their fidility. We have faith in our premarital sex partners and we will not insist on them using it''.

With the marriage age going up to 25 years on an average, 15 to 20 per cent of young people had premarital sex and that too without condoms in the state, she revealed, lamenting that the prevelance would shoot up in geometric progressive, if urgent steps were not not taken to promote use of condoms.

She said 90 per cent transmission of AIDS was through sex and among the people in the productive age group of 15 to 45 years.

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