HIV and AIDS in BPOs
Cause of Concern
By M.D. dela Cruz Tan

"SEB sa Call Center – Now Na!”

“Gusto Sex After Work, Pasok!”

“Sex During Break sa Night Shift, Ayala Ave.”

These are but some of the numerous threads in the forums in online gay chat community Guys4Men.com – open invitations for quick meetings, usually for sexual hook-ups, mainly by and also mainly for men who have sex with men (MSMs) working in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.  While this should normally not merit special attention, as it is, by all means, no different from the pick-up activities of other MSMs in other industries, it is getting a scrutiny, however, with the growing number of people working in the industry testing HIV/AIDS positive, seemingly coinciding with the continued BPO boom.

A cause of concern, if ever there is one.

DENIAL IN PROGRESS. That 10 people tested positive for HIV is cause of concern already.

A SMALL FIGURE?

Just this May (2008), the Philippine National AIDS Council (PNAC) disclosed that since January, at least 10 people “with history of working in call centers (which is a segment of the BPO industry)” already tested positive for HIV.

Ten is actually a small number, considering that, as of January 2004, the National Epidemiology Center (NEC) of the Department of Health (DOH) recorded 1,979 cases of people with HIV and AIDS, 1,343 (68%) of them asymptomatic and 636 (32%) AIDS cases.  Of the total HIV and AIDS cases, 1,145 were men (62%), with the predominant mode of transmission still heterosexual contact (1,251), followed by homosexual (356) and bisexual contact (101).  Other modes of transmission included perinatal (mother to child) transmission (29), blood/blood products (13), and injecting drug use (six) (See Table 1).  A more recent data (collated in September 2007) from the Department of Health (DOH) AIDS Registry in the Philippines reports 2,965 people live with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), a low figure compared to the UNAIDS estimate of 12,000 HIV-positive Filipinos by end-2005.

Table 1: HIV AND AIDS ESTIMATE FOR THE PHILIPPINES

Sources: usaid.gov, UNAIDS Global AIDS Report 2006

It doesn’t help, too, that the NEC noted that 640 (32%) of the 1,979 HIV seropositive cases were overseas Filipino workers (OFWs, of which 473 or 74% were men), a number 28% higher than 2002 figures; compounded with the largely held belief that the Philippines is a low-HIV-prevalence country, with less than 0.1% of the adult population estimated to be HIV-positive, lulling many to believe that, yes, “it is there, but it isn’t really there.”  And then, of course, there’s the fact that, currently, over 200,000 people work in the BPO industry, expected to grow to 900,000 by 2010, so having only 10 cases (as was noted in the BPO industry) may not seem worth giving special attention.

But the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) states that “several factors put the Philippines in danger of a broader HIV/AIDS epidemic, (including) increasing population mobility within and outside of the Philippine islands; a conservative culture, adverse to publicly discussing issues of a sexual nature; rising levels of sex work, casual sex, unsafe sex, and injecting drug use; high STI prevalence and poor health-seeking behaviors among at-risk groups; gender inequality; weak integration of HIV/AIDS responses in local government activities; shortcomings in prevention campaigns; inadequate social and behavioral research and monitoring; and the persistence of stigma and discrimination, which results in the relative invisibility of PLWHA.”

The USAID adds: “Most-at-risk groups include MSMs, 1% to 3% of whom were found to be HIV-positive by sentinel surveillance conducted in Cebu and Quezon cities in 2001; and injecting drug users (IDUs), 1% of whom were found to be HIV-positive in Cebu City in 2005.”

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