Number of HIV-positive overseas Filipino workers up 14% in March 2019

A total of 91 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were newly diagnosed as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive in March 2019, up 14 percent from 80 in the same month in 2018, a Philippine lawmaker said on Saturday.

“The March cases brought to 6,524 the cumulative number of OFWs found living with HIV since the government began passive surveillance of the virus in 1984,” ACTS-OFW Representative Aniceto Bertiz said.

He said OFWs now comprise 10 percent of the 65,463 confirmed cases listed in the Philippine National HIV/AIDS Registry as of March.

The OFWs in the registry worked abroad within the past five years, either on land or at sea, when they were diagnosed HIV-positive, Bertiz added.

Of the 6,524 OFWs in the registry, Bertiz said 86 percent, or 5,635, were male with the median age of 32 years.

The 889 female OFWs in the registry had a median age of 34 years, he added.

Bertiz said he is counting on the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to deliver “highly improved support” to the growing number of OFWs living with HIV, as mandated by the new AIDS Prevention and Control Law that took effect earlier this year.

“The preventive education seminar is to be provided for free and at no cost to OFWs or to the staff concerned,” Bertiz said.

The Philippines has recently signed an updated law known as the “Philippines HIV and AIDS Policy Act”, which lowers the age of a person to avail of free HIV testing without parents’ consent from 18 to 15 years old.

According to the The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) 2017 global report, the Philippines had the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the Asia and Pacific region with the highest percent increase of 133 percent of new HIV infections between 2010 and 2016. By the end of 2019, an estimated 93,400 Filipinos are living with HIV.

The report said sexual contact remained as the predominant mode of transmission.

HIV causes AIDS, which kills the immune system cells that help the body fight infections and diseases, therefore exposing infected people to pneumonia, tuberculosis, and other opportunistic diseases.