The prevalence of Visayans working overseas and the propensity to have unprotected sex especially on homosexuals could have largely contributed to the region's owning 17% of the country's 498 reported Absero-positive of Human Immuno Virus (HIV) in March 2014. In Bohol, about four persons were monitored to have asymptomatic cases from January to March of this year, according to the National Epidemiology Center's Philippine HIV/AIDS registry. This adds up to the 45 asymptomatic in cumulative reports since 1984. This too, as the NEC reported 498 new HIV Absero-positive individuals, as confirmed by the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrom (STD/AIDS) Cooperative Central Laboratory (SACCL).

The Philippine HIV and AIDS Registry (PHAR) also bared that since 1984 when the country had only about two reported cases, the numbers started to get alarming 10 years later when the cases when as high as over a hundred. What is even more fearsome is that since 2004 which had only 199 reported cases, the figure ballooned to 4,814 in 2013, with a tendency for 2014 to surpass the figure with the disease's characteristic progression. Since 1984 and over the years, over 17,000 Filipinos have been reported to have tested positive, and over 16,000 of these persons are asymptomatic, the disease is not manifested and continues to be a threat to unsuspecting partners. At the Philippine HIV and AIDS registry, for the month of March 2014, about 95% of the cases are males, 59% of them within the 20-29 year old bracket.

Reported modes of transmission were sexual contact (443), needle sharing among injecting drug users (54) and mother to child (1), according to the March registry. In the March 2014 registry, it showed 81% of the new HIV cases come from NCR, Region, 7, Region 4A, Region 3 and Region 6. PHAR said sexual contact was the most common mode of HIV transmission, accounting for 95% or (1,577) of all reported AIDS cases and43% (677) of sexual transmission was through homosexual contact, followed by heterosexual contact and (592) bisexual contact. In 2014 too, AIDS surveillance group at the Department of Health's NEC, noted there were 162 HIV positive OFWs, comprising 11% of cases reported for the year. Of these, 142 (88%) were male and only 20 (12%) were female. All acquired the infection through sexual contact (61 heterosexual, 60 homosexual and 41 bisexual. In Bohol, Provincial HIV council held a candlelight memorial for HIV AIDS last Sunday, an event attended by Dr. Jonathan Neil Erasmo, and Governor Edgar Chatto at the Plaza Rizal. (PIABohol)