[Fwd: [CAST] (Reuters) 'Rent-A-Dread' Contributes to Caribbean AIDS Crisis]

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From: "National Allanice for Re Construction"
Subject: (Reuters) 'Rent-A-Dread' Contributes to Caribbean AIDS Crisis

'Rent-A-Dread' Contributes to Caribbean AIDS Crisis
Mon June 2, 2003 11:50 AM ET
By Laura Myers

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica (Reuters) - The sun-splashed Caribbean's growing
sex tourism industry is contributing to one of the region's grimmest
problems -- the world's second-highest rate of AIDS infection.

Prostitution catering to sex-seeking tourists and a growing trend
called "rent-a-dread" has helped push the Caribbean AIDS/HIV infection
rate higher than in any area of the world save sub-Saharan Africa,
regional experts say.

The Caribbean AIDS crisis is an ominous one for the tourism industry,
the region's leading moneymaker built and marketed on sun, sand, sea
and sex.

Sex tourism involves men traveling to poor Caribbean nations, where
the regional average annual income is about $3,000, in search of
prostitutes.

The beach boy, or "rent-a-dread," phenomenon sees fair-skinned North
American and European women seeking exotic, dark-skinned Jamaican men
wearing dreadlock hairstyles for sex, Ian Edwards, a Washington-based
spokesman for the Organization of American States, said at a recent
conference on sustainable tourism held in Jamaica.

"There's a mystique that apparently comes attached with the
dreadlocks. I've seen it here and I've seen it in Barbados and it is
not rare," Edwards said.

In the Caribbean 2.4 percent of people aged 15-49 live with the HIV
virus or AIDS itself, according to 2002 figures from the World Health
Organization. That infection rate trails only sub-Saharan Africa,
where 29.4 million people -- including 8.8 percent of people in that
age bracket -- are infected.

By comparison, the infection rate in western Europe is 0.3 percent and
in North America is 0.6 percent in the same age group, according to
U.N. figures.

More than 501,500 Caribbean residents have the AIDS virus, according
to the Caribbean Epidemiology Center, or CAREC, in Port of Spain,
Trinidad and Tobago.

"Sex tourism is a growing reality and denying it won't make it go
away," said Lelei LeLaulu, president of Washington-based Counterpart
International, a nonprofit group. "It's tourism that's designed and
packaged for direct physical contact with a local or locals as opposed
to eco-tourism."

THREAT TO DEVELOPMENT

Nations in the region heavily dependent on tourism and most affected
by the AIDS epidemic include the Bahamas, Barbados, the Dominican
Republic, Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, St. Martin and Tobago, according
to CAREC research.

"The spread of AIDS has become a threat to regional development and
regional security in the Caribbean," Anthony Bryan, a Caribbean
analyst at the University of Miami, wrote in a research paper.

Researchers say cultural factors contribute to the spread of AIDS in
the region. Caribbean men typically have multiple sexual partners and
do not like to use condoms, they say, and some infected Caribbean
women are middle-aged, married for many years and unable to ask their
husbands to use condoms.

"It is an enormous health issue. It affects lost revenue, general
health, the local communities and local culture," LeLaulu said.

But sex tourism is believed to have little impact on the AIDS spread
in Haiti, the worst hit Caribbean country, or communist Cuba.

Haiti has about half of Caribbean AIDS/HIV infections and is plagued
by poor education and poor health care, but has few tourists.

Cuba has the lowest rate of AIDS in the Caribbean thanks to a harsh
policy of locking infected people away in sanatoriums and the
near-absence of hard drugs.

Cuba has become the main Caribbean destination for sexual tourism
since the collapse of Soviet communism plunged the island's economy
into crisis and forced many Cuban women to work the streets for
dollars, risking disease.

Flights from Europe are packed with men, mainly Italians, seeking sex
or romance with Cuban women in Havana. But experts say sexual tourism
is not the main cause of AIDS in Cuba since the trade is mainly
heterosexual and 70 percent of the 4,000 AIDS cases are among the gay
community.

"Sexual tourism is not the main problem. Male tourists from Europe
come with their own condoms," said Pamela Faura, of Population
Services International, a U.S.-based organization that promotes safe
sex in Cuba with European funding.

But Faura said young Cubans are at risk because they are promiscuous
and shun the use of condoms.
Received on Wed Jun 4 09:21:53 2003