ASEAN seeks to thrash out joint AIDS strategy

ASEAN seeks to thrash out joint AIDS strategy

HANOI (AFP): Experts from around southeast Asia opened a four- day meeting here Wednesday to thrash out a joint strategy for controlling the spread of AIDS amid warnings the region remains vulnerable to a serious explosion of HIV infection.

Even though the AIDS epidemic had hit southeast Asia later than Africa, Europe and North America, it was now "on a rapid increase," warned Vietnamese Health Minister Do Nguyen Phuong.

Information sharing and joint monitoring by member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) were vital if the region was to avoid the "pandemic," he said.

ASEAN health ministries reported that HIV detection rates remained low among the general population but warned that much higher rates among high risk groups like prostitutes and intravenous drug-users left no room for complacency.

The continued failure of at-risk groups to use condoms or clean needles meant there was a serious danger that the higher rates of infection could spread to the general population.

Vietnam has already reached a "concentrated stage" of the epidemic, with HIV infection of five percent among high risk groups far outstripping infection of less than one percent among the general population, a health ministry study presented to the meeting said.

A Philippine study said high rates of syphilis among prostitutes showed condoms were still being used rarely, threatening to undermine the still low rates of HIV infection.

"We shouldn't be complacent -- behavioral data shows that most high risk individuals fail to take proper protective measures," it said.

Indonesia said the fact that just 1,439 people had so far tested HIV-positive in a population of nearly 180 million should not allay any fears.

"Almost all the favorable conditions for the spread of HIV exist" in Indonesia, including "high-risk sexual behavior, poverty, high prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, (and) increasing migration and urbanization," the health ministry study said.

Delegates warned that HIV infection remained seriously under- reported in the region as a lack of resources meant screening still covered only a small minority of the population.

The Lao health ministry acknowledged that it had tested just 47,762 blood samples in a population of more than five million, putting a serious question mark over the official figure of just 632 people HIV-positive.

Delegates broadly agreed with a World Bank study published earlier this month highlighting rising intravenous drug use as the leading source of HIV transmission in the region.

Sexual transmission was rising rapidly, they said, not least because so many prostitutes were also intravenous drug users. "It is clear that in Vietnam HIV infection is predominantly and rapidly being transmitted among injecting drug users," the Vietnamese health ministry said.

But there had also been a rapid increase in HIV infection among prostitutes, with infection rates reaching 15.9 percent in the commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City in 1999 against just 3.1 percent the previous year, it added.

"The high prevalence of drug injecting among female sex workers may explain this increase," it said.

The Vietnamese health ministry said it would launch a month- long AIDS awareness campaign on November 15, on the eve of U.S. President Bill Clinton's landmark visit here next week.

Clinton is expected to announce substantial U.S. financial support for AIDS prevention here amid mounting U.S. concern. "(AIDS) is a mounting problem in Vietnam and could be catastrophic if it is not addressed right away," an embassy official said last week.