Feb 13 2007
Increasing numbers of young people in the Czech Republic are not protecting themselves against HIV transmission, according to the Czech daily newspaper Mlada Fronta, the Prague Daily Monitor reports.
According to the Daily Monitor, a recent survey among 139 young people ages 16 to 19 in the country found that most do not take precautions during sex to avoid contracting HIV or other sexually transmitted infections.
Two-thirds of respondents said that they fear HIV/AIDS but do not believe they can acquire the virus, according to the Daily Monitor.
In addition, 39% of survey participants said they insist on using condoms during sex.
"The disease is no longer widely discussed and, in addition, Czech young people believe that it [is] curable," Dalibor Sedlacek of an HIV/AIDS center in Plzen, Czech Republic, said.
According to the Daily Monitor, the country has recorded 920 HIV cases, although some doctors say the number of HIV-positive people in the country could be five times as high (Prague Daily Monitor, 2/5).
 This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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