AIDS in Asia-Pacific 'silent tsunami'

The region posted the world's second-highest infection rate last
year. AP 2005-07-03 01:58:34

KOBE, JAPAN -- The Asia-Pacific faces a "silent tsunami" as HIV/AIDS
rates surge in a region home to more than half the world's
population, a United Nations official said yesterday.

Despite the fact that 99 per cent of Asians don't have the virus, in
2004 this region posted the world's second-highest infection rates
after sub-Saharan Africa, said JVR Prasada Rao, regional director of
the UNAIDS support team for Asia and the Pacific.

"The virus doesn't kill hundreds of thousands at a thunderous stroke
and it doesn't provide vivid television pictures," he said during
the Seventh International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the
Pacific. "Rather, it is a silent tsunami."

The disease is also attacking women, who account for 40 per cent of
the cases in Asia, a region so massive that percentages measuring
national infection rates often are useless in telling the real story
of the millions who are living with the disease, said Dr. Shigeru
Omi, the World Health Organization's Western Pacific regional
director.

"Can you imagine that every day 1,500 people are dying? Every day,"
he said. "It's a huge amount and 3,500 are newly infected every
day."

The virus is also circulating beyond certain populations in Asia --
such as injecting drug users and prostitutes -- and moving more
steadily into the general population, he said.

For instance, an injecting drug user could also visit a sex worker
and then go home to a wife who could contract the disease
unknowingly and transmit it to an unborn child.

It is that kind of overlap that's fuelling an HIV/AIDS explosion in
the Asia-Pacific region that will lead to another 12 million
infections during the next five years if the disease is left
unchecked, UNAIDS has warned.

During the mid-1980s, while the United States and Europe grappled
with raging epidemics, the percentage of people infected in Asia was
undetectable.

During the 1990s, Thailand and Cambodia were Asia's only two
countries experiencing major problems. But by 2004, the numbers in
some Asian countries rivaled those in sub-Saharan Africa.

Rao stressed that it's not too late, and that strong national
leadership and more funding can turn the epidemic around.
However, he said, "If national responses remain as they are today,
we're all in deep trouble.

"We know what to do. We are just not doing enough of it."

He said prevention programs must be expanded to target groups with
spiking infection rates. Out of 16 Asian countries, a study found
that only one per cent of men who have sex with men had been reached
with HIV/AIDS messages -- and only five per cent of injecting drug
users.

Funding must also be increased to $5 billion US over the next two
years to make a dent in the epidemic and affordable treatment must
be made available to more people, he said.

But even in places where treatment is available, some people refuse
to go for testing or treatment out of fear their HIV status will be
disclosed and they will be ostracized by society.

Making affordable treatment widely available is another way to
lessen stigma and discrimination, but it remains scarce in the
region.

In India -- which has the world's second-highest number of HIV
infections after South Africa -- only about five per cent of the
five million now infected receive treatment.

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