AIDS epidemic seen threatening `Asian promise'

AIDS epidemic seen threatening `Asian promise'

MANILA (Reuter): The AIDS epidemic is threatening growth and progress in booming Asia, where 30 percent of world HIV cases are projected to be found by 2000, speakers at an Asian Development Bank-sponsored meeting said yesterday.

They said a large commercial sex industry and intravenous drug use were hastening the spread of the disease in the region, known as the world's engine of growth.

Although the severity of the threat of AIDS varies from country to country, the disease is bound to have serious economic and social costs, they said.

"The HIV epidemic is the enemy of 'Asian promise'," ADB Vice- President Peter Sullivan said at the start of a meeting of the ADB and the UN Development Program (UNDP) on the economic implications of HIV/AIDS.

"It threatens much of the progress that has been made over the past two decades and endangers economic growth in countries that have introduced growth-enhancing, economy-wide reforms only recently," he said.

In Asia, the first cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome were reported only in the mid-1980s but by 1991 over one million cases of infection with the AIDS-causing human immuno- deficiency virus were estimated to have already occurred, ADB economist Myo Thant said in a paper.

He said that, while there was wide disparity between estimates and actual numbers, a clear trend showed the epidemic was moving steadily towards developing countries, particularly those in Asia.

Thant said two million of the total 14 million HIV cases in the world were from South and Southeast Asia, adding that the situation was likely to become even more severe in the future.

Sex industry

He cited World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10 million, or 30 percent, of the 30 million to 40 million HIV cases worldwide by year 2000 might be from Asia alone.

India and Thailand, Thant said, had fewer than 1,000 HIV cases in 1987. By 1993, the infections were estimated to have grown to at least one million cases in India and half a million in Thailand.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic will force a re-thinking of the role of tourism in economic development, Thant said.

He said while not all tourism was sex-oriented, Asia would need to re-examine attitudes towards implicitly using the sex industry as a tourist attraction.

This particularly applies to countries that are just beginning to rely on tourism as a quick solution to earning foreign exchange.

Bhaichand Patel, UNDP officer-in-charge in the Philippines, said HIV/AIDS, more than a public-health problem, was a major factor in a country's socio-economic agenda.

Citing a World Bank report, he said many of those who fell ill and eventually died of AIDS in developing countries were from the economically active and productive group in society.

Officials said although prevention could be costly for most of the developing countries, it was far cheaper to invest in preventive activities than battling widespread AIDS.

"For most Asian countries, the insurance premium on the AIDS epidemic when compared to the costs and strains imposed on the nation state is the lesser of two evils," Thant said.