50M Asian women at HIV risk from partners: UN

More than 1.5 million women with HIV in Asia were infected by their husbands or boyfriends and 50 million more are at risk of infection, according to a UN report released last week.

The "HIV Transmission in Intimate Partner Relationships in Asia" report by UNAIDS said the women at risk are either married or in long-term relationships with men who engage in "high-risk sexual behaviors."

"That is, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, the clients of sex workers," UNAIDS regional director Prasada Rao said in a report from Agence France Presse.

"(It's) a problem of great magnitude that the countries have largely ignored (and) a challenge that we may no longer ignore," Rao said on the sidelines of the ninth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Bali.

Women accounted for 35% of all adult HIV infections in Asia in 2008, up from 17% in 1990, according to the report.

In Indonesia the virus is now spreading to long-term partners and sex workers, the report said.

"The facts speak for themselves. It is estimated that more than 90% of the 1.7 million women living with HIV in Asia became infected (by) husbands and partners while in long-term relationships," Rao said.