The number of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) who tested reactive to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) continues to rise.
ACTS-OFW partylist Rep. Aniceto Bertiz III said on Tuesday that 88 OFWs were diagnosed with HIV last February, which is a 22% increase compared to the same month last year.
This brought the cumulative number of HIV-infected OFWs, since the government began passive surveillance of the virus in 1984, to 6,433.
OFWs now make up 10% of the cases in the National HIV and AIDS Registry which was recorded from January 1984 to June 2018.
Bertiz said OFWs in the registry worked abroad within the past five years, either on land or at sea, when they were diagnosed to be HIV-positive.
Out of the 6,433 OFWs who have HIV, some 5,553 or 86 percent, are male with the median age of 32.
Meanwhile, the 880 female OFWs in the registry have a median age of 34 years.
HIV is a human-to-human transmitted virus that attacks and weakens a person’s immune system. AIDS, on the other hand, is the progression of the HIV infection in the body which occurs when the immune system is already weak making it prone to opportunistic infections, such as tuberculosis and pneumonia.
