AIDS threatens Asia with grave economic crisis
AIDS threatens Asia with grave economic crisis
MANILA (AFP): Asia faces potentially grave economic problems from the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and must be willing to challenge religious and cultural norms to mitigate them, experts said yesterday.
Asian Development Bank (ADB) vice president Peter Sullivan warned that the ravages of AIDS on the world's most populous and fastest growing region may wreck the tourism industry and ultimately lead to productivity falls due to a shortage of skilled labor that would push up wage costs.
Its effects would go beyond the sick to those who must spend time and money caring for the victims, he said without giving figures.
"The potentially grave consequences of a widespread AIDS epidemic on economic development demand forward-looking, anticipatory strategies," he told an international AIDS conference here.
Despite the possibility that there would be more AIDS-infected people in the Asia-Pacific than in any other region, UNESCO International Bioethics Committee member Michael Kirby said the region was dealing with the problem "pretty poorly".
AIDS has so far proved incurable and is often fatal. It is caused by the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) which is acquired mainly through sexual contact and the sharing of body fluids and syringes.
"Since the epidemic is often transmitted through sexual relations, its impact tends to be higher among the sexually active -- in other words, young adults," Sullivan said.
Chaiyos Kumanusont, of the AIDS division of the Ministry of Public Health in Thailand, said his government found that three or four working people were needed to support an AIDS patient.
Indirect costs of AIDS, such as the loss of productivity from ill workers, is even greater than the direct cost of caring for AIDS patients, said Myo Thant, a senior economist with the ADB.
Experts said the costs of treatment of AIDS were beyond the reach of most countries, making prevention the most economical way of dealing with the problem.
Kirby said the successful examples of Australia, New Zealand and Thailand in stemming the spread of the disease showed that "political appreciation of the... economic, developmental and social costs" of the epidemic was necessary.
This included "a readiness to offend the sensibilities of those who yearn for the days before AIDS and to challenge religious and cultural modesties" in order to save lives.
He cited Australia and New Zealand's needle-exchange programs and Thailand's distribution of free condoms while noting that other countries still opposed explicit media campaigns on AIDS prevention.
Sullivan also warned that while individual countries had their own anti-AIDS programs, "regional or multi-country approaches are almost non-existent in Asia."
Such programs are needed because of the similarity of the epidemics in each country, the similar socio-economic conditions in these countries and greater movement of people across borders, he said.
Sullivan said regional activities could complement those of individual countries, citing the ADB's AIDS work program in countries along the Mekong River.
He called for a greater role for the private sector and non- government organizations, saying the public sector cannot cope by itself.
Governments could focus on ensuring that infected people can get treatment by guarding against discrimination in insurance, housing, schools or hospitals, as well as make policies like tax breaks on condoms and information campaigns and training of health workers.
Non-government organizations could deliver services to the grassroots sector while the private sector could create the conditions that allow their workers to get involved, he said.