2 HIV-positive housewives alarm Angeles execs

ANGELES CITY — City health authorities have expressed "alarm" over the continued spread of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which leads to the fatal Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), after learning that the latest victims include housewives.

Dr. Teresita Esguerra, chief of the city reproductive and health awareness center and social hygiene clinic, said HIV cases have continued to rise here due to the victims’ lack of awareness of their affliction.

"Most of over 60 HIV cases we have found since 1985 were women registered with City Hall as entertainment workers and those who ‘freelanced.’ But we recently received referrals involving two housewives who also tested positive for HIV," she said.

"One of the housewives turned out to have a foreigner husband who also tested positive for HIV. But more worrisome is the case of the other housewife whose (Filipino) husband we have not traced," she said.

Since the pullout of the US Air Force from Clark Field here in 1991, many local entertainment establishments have opened their doors to locals to survive, although male foreigners still continued to patronize bars and other nightspots, mostly along Fields Avenue.

Esguerra expressed alarm over the first two cases involving housewives, noting that since 1985, HIV cases have been limited only to women in the local entertainment industry.

She said this could indicate that there could be more married men who, without being aware of it, might have already contracted HIV from either registered female workers in local nightspots or "freelancers" who ply their sex trade in the streets or in other places.

Esguerra said health surveillance teams normally discover two HIV cases out of 600 people under surveillance each year, while one out of every 1,000 people who undergo mass testing also turn out to have HIV.

"This rate is high and alarming," she said.

Of the more than 60 HIV victims here since 1985, 20, two of them male homosexuals, have died, Esguerra said.

"We do not know what happened to the others since they moved out of the city," she said.

Esguerra urged local menfolk who frequent nightspots to avail themselves of free HIV testing on Monday at the Jaycees Center at Sta. Maria Subdivision.

"We have limited funds for the HIV testing kits which cost P40,000 each, so what we do is we mix the blood samples of five people and test the mixture. If the mixture tests positive for HIV, we zero in on each of the five people to find out who among them has HIV," she said.

So far, none of the HIV victims in this city contracted the viral ailment through injections. All of them got it from sexual intercourse, Esguerra said.