Experts challenge Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome ‘risk’ in Business Process Outsourcings

Are the 1.3 million young people working in call centres more at risk of HIV/AIDS? “Yes,” declared Dr Suniti Solomon, a top HIV/AIDS doctor who helped detect India’s first case in 1986.

Speaking at the International Congress on Infectious Diseases in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, Dr Solomon, who runs an AIDS centre in Chennai, informed the gathering that youngsters working in call centres are sexually active and are prone to have unprotected sex with multiple partners who work in the same organisation.

Many of these affairs develop during their night shifts when these young workers “are huddled together”. These workers came to her clinic to get tested for HIV because they were worried that they had been having unprotected sex. “Call centre Romeos are a major high risk for HIV,” she pointed out.

Citing “confessions” by the visitors to her centre, Dr Solomon said groups of young men and women rent apartments along the beach during weekends and end up having sex with multiple partners. “If they are having sex just among themselves and all are non-infected, it is fine. But if there is one person who has gone out of this group and brought in the virus, it will spread to everyone,” she said.

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