China, India, Indonesia become the focus of AIDS battle in Asia
China, India, Indonesia become the focus of AIDS battle in Asia
Stephanie Wong
Agence France-Presse/Hong Kong
Three Asian countries that are alone home to 40 percent of
humanity are at risk of seeing the HIV/AIDS epidemic jumping from
narrow risk groups into the broader population, experts warn.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint UN Program
on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) have warned that India, China and Indonesia
are in danger of seeing serious HIV outbreaks among their more
than 2.5 billion people.
The warning will be among the issues to be discussed when some
20,000 top researchers, policymakers and activists gather in
Bangkok this week.
They will be taking part in one of the biggest conferences in
the 23-year history of AIDS, to assess the pandemic that is
poised to ravage Eastern Europe as well as Asia's most populous
countries.
"There are increasing warning signals that serious HIV
outbreaks threaten in several countries (in Asia)," the two UN
agencies said in their annual report, AIDS Epidemic Update,
released in November.
"Injecting drug use and sex work are so pervasive in some
areas that even countries with currently low infection levels
could see epidemics surge suddenly," the report said.
HIV prevalence in the region remains under one percent of the
adult population, which may seem small compared to the AIDS-
ravaged countries of southern Africa, where more than a quarter
of adults aged 15-49 have the virus.
"That figure ... can be deceptive," the report said. "Several
countries in the (Asian) region are so large and populous that
national aggregations can obscure serious epidemics in some
provinces and states."
An estimated 40 million people worldwide are infected with
AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and around 7.4
million live in Asia and the Pacific. A million people in this
region will have caught the virus this year, and half a million
will have died, the report predicted.
China, with the world's largest population of 1.3 billion, has
seen a sharp rise in HIV/AIDS cases in recent years. The number
of new cases has doubled to 21,000 from 10,000 in 2002.
The health ministry estimated there were 840,000 HIV carriers
in China, of whom about 80,000 had AIDS. International agencies
and the United Nations, believe the actual number could be much
higher.
China's HIV/AIDS epidemic has been mostly concentrated in the
poorest and most marginalized populations such as farmers in
central provinces who had to sell blood to make a living, or drug
addicts in Yunnan in the southwest.
But health experts say the problem is likely to spread to
China's booming cities. Vice Minister of Health Wong Longde said
the most pressing issue was finding and testing those infected
who are unaware they have the virus.
"We have to find these HIV-infected people as soon as possible
and find out if they need immediate treatment. Only this way can
we further our work of preventing and controlling HIV/AIDS," Wang
said.
In India, up to 4.6 million people in its population of more
than one billion are estimated to be HIV positive.
"The main problems in India are that almost 80 percent of
people with HIV do not know their status of HIV," said I.S.
Gilada, secretary general of the People's Health Organization in
India.
Free treatment is provided for AIDS patients but few tend to
take advantage of it, he said.
"...once HIV is detected, there is hardly anything we can
offer to them by way of comprehensive treatment. The government
had announced free treatment for 100,000 AIDS patients from April
1 in six worst-affected states. Hardly 500 people are getting the
treatment," he said.
Although India has the lowest-priced HIV drugs, Gilada said
not enough effort had gone into curbing the epidemic.
"It requires a cohesive effort at the national level to
utilize these strengths. This can only be done by the government
or a very large non-governmental organization but such a cohesive
effort is not there," he said.
In Indonesia, poor resources and a lack of funding make it
hard to control the spread of AIDS.
The main drivers of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia are intravenous drug
users, among whom there is an infection rate "consistently around
the 40 to 50 percent mark in a lot of urban areas," said Jane
Wilson, country coordinator of UNAIDS.
There are an estimated 160,000 intravenous drug users in the
country, of whom 43,000 or 25 percent are infected, she said.
Although the government has put in place good policies, they
cover a limited amount of people, Wilson said.
"At this stage, the implementation of the policies is limited
to less than 10 percent of those with high-risk behavior," she
said.
More international funding and better resources could help,
Wilson said but acknowledged, "it's a very large country to
coordinate in."