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Security sector: 16% HIV rate
25/01/2008 08:32 - (SA)
Pretoria - HIV prevalence in the private security industry is at 15.9% and in the legal services industry at 13.8%, a study compiled by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has shown.
The study on the impact and responses to HIV and AIDS in the private security and legal services industry in South Africa was commissioned by the Safety and Security Sector Education and Training Authority.
Research was done among 2 787 participants from private security services in Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, who agreed to be interviewed and of those, 2 224 agreed to also give a blood sample for an HIV test.
A total of 421 participants from the legal services sector including lawyers, legal secretaries, and clerks agreed to be interviewed in the survey and 341 agreed also to be tested.
In the security sector, men had a higher prevalence at 17.3% against women at 12.3%.
Black people had a substantially higher prevalence of 27.3% compared to that of other race groups at less than 1%.
More than one eighth of the participants had two or more sexual partners while the largest majority, 86.7%, had only one regular sexual partner.
People younger than 24 years old reported relatively high levels of condom use during the past 12 months.
In the legal services sector women had a slightly higher infection rate of 14.4% compared to that of men at 12.4%.
Black people had a significant higher HIV prevalence than the other race groups - 20.2% against 1.7% - and the 25-49 year old age group was more severely affected at 16% than the age group 50 years and older at 5.7%.
One third of the men in the legal services had two or more sexual partners compared to only one twentieth of their female counterparts.
In this sector most businesses did not regard HIV and AIDS as a business concern, and they also did not make any attempt to measure the potential impact of the disease.
- SAPA
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