Malaysian AIDS Foundation works with companies to spark new HIV awareness campaign

Malaysian AIDS Council and its partners hope to educate and change mindsets surrounding HIV and AIDS through their new campaign. - AFP

On World AIDS Day, Dec 1, the Malaysian AIDS Foundation together with The Body Shop and ESP Condoms will launch a social media-driven campaign that seeks to raise awareness of and evoke social change in response to the alarming rise in sexually transmitted HIV infections in this country.

“It is time Malaysians face the cold hard facts about HIV,” says Prof Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman, Chairman of the Malaysian AIDS Foundation. “Over 74% of new HIV infections in Malaysia last year were sexually transmitted, which is a drastic two-fold increase in just five years,” she says. “When an epidemic is driven by sexual transmission, women and men are equally at risk. This can be shown by the fact that the male-to-female new infection ratio now has narrowed from 10:1 to 4:1 within the span of just ten years.”