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.