ASEAN considers program to counter AIDS virus
ASEAN considers program to counter AIDS virus
KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Fast-growing Southeast Asian countries are considering a five-year program to counter AIDS, fearing the killer disease could hinder their economic prosperity, officials said yesterday.
"We have to prevent the disease from spreading across our workforce," said Cho Kan Sin, senior information officer of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the start of a weeklong meeting on AIDS in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
The United States, Japan and Australia will help fund an AIDS program for ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Cho said the proposed activities include an ASEAN Regional AIDS Information and Research Reference Center in Thailand and other information exchange programs.
"The Kuala Lumpur meeting will consider all the proposals before drafting a common strategy. We will launch it as soon as we get the funds. But we have to do it soon," he said.
An official with the ASEAN task force on AIDS, Dr Sulaiman Che Rus, said most of those suffering from AIDS in the region are drug addicts, particularly in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
He said Thailand had the most AIDS cases, followed by Malaysia and the Philippines. "We only have the official statistics, but most of the AIDS cases are still unreported," Sulaiman said.
Some 600,000 Thais were believed to be HIV-positive at the end of 1993, according to government estimates.
ASEAN launched the task force last year to map out common strategies to combat the acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
Malaysia's Health Ministry said the country has 8,718 cases of the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, of which 100 have developed AIDS. Sixty-seven AIDS victims have died, it said.
"We must respond to AIDS from an economic standpoint - that AIDS prevention is crucial to the sustained development of our nations," Malaysia's Health Minister Lee Kim Sai said.
Task force chairman Djumhana Sumantri told reporters the Kuala Lumpur talks would work out details of the regional program.
"We need to formulate a common line of action to check the spread of the HIV (human immuno-deficiency virus) that causes AIDS because the WHO (World Health Organization) estimates that the problem will severely hit Asia in the next decade," Djumhana said.
The ASEAN Task Force on AIDS would discuss the setting up of the center, which could be funded by the World Bank and co- supervised by the WHO.
The estimated number of AIDS victims or HIV carriers in the ASEAN countries had not been determined yet but officials from the task force said the figure was increasing rapidly because of the region's drug problem.