KL conference AIDS in Asia-Pacific
KL conference AIDS in Asia-Pacific
KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Asia's largest AIDS conference has a heavy topic on its agenda: How to control the epidemic in countries where experts say the virus is growing at a faster rate than anywhere in the world.
When some 3,000 experts, activists and AIDS sufferers begin meeting on Sunday for the 5th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, their defined task is to curb HIV's spread into the next millennium in nations that are often hush-hush about sex.
About 95 percent of people living with the HIV virus live in the developing world, the vast majority in Africa. But experts see Asia as the next trouble spot.
"In the last year, at least half of the new cases worldwide came from South and Southeast Asia," said Marina Mahathir, president of the Malaysian AIDS Council and chair of the four-day conference.
About 7 million people in the Asia-Pacific region are living with AIDS or HIV. The number might pale in comparison to the nearly 21 million cases in Africa, but the "trend is upwards and that is what's worrying," Mahathir said in an interview.
The UN Aids Program said in a statement that Asia had the most rapid rate of growth in HIV infection, where the virus is primarily transmitted between heterosexuals and by injected drugs. India has more HIV-infected people, about 4 million, than any country in the world, the UN said.
Five percent of all Cambodians - or nearly one of every 25 adults - has HIV or AIDS. In Thailand, the first Asian nation heavily affected by the disease, 2 percent of the population is infected, according to UNAIDS.
In Malaysia, the number of documented HIV cases since the first case was reported in 1985 has jumped to 31,000, up from 6,000 cases in 1993.
The grim scenario is almost the opposite of what's happening on the other side of the globe. In North America and Western Europe, the rate of infection has been brought under control after massive prevention campaigns, according to the United Nations. Of those infected, fewer are dying with the availability of anti-retroviral drugs.
"All the sophisticated new drugs are really a dream for most people," Mahathir said.
Asia's two-year economic crisis has compounded problems faced by already poor nations, unable to afford expensive medical treatment, Mahathir said.
Much of the conference will focus on the region's religious and cultural taboos which have stood in the way of AIDS prevention.
"Denial is a very major problem," said Mahathir, the daughter of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is credited with putting AIDS on the public health agenda in this Southeast Asian nation. "A lot of our societies are very conservative and would rather not talk about it."
Large numbers of women have been documented with HIV and AIDS in cultures that practice arranged marriage and allow men to have multiple wives.
Malaysia was chosen to host the meeting, in part, because it is one of the region's most progressive Muslim countries. While Islam has no clear guidelines on using condoms, only married couples are legally allowed to have sex.
To encourage the use of condoms outside marriage is akin to promoting promiscuity and some religious communities brush off AIDS as a punishment for an immoral act.
"Ultimately what we're trying to do is save lives, and that's not contradictory to any religion at all," Mahathir said.
Meanwhile in Nairobi, amid dancing and the rhythmic pounding of drums, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Friday urged Kenya to redouble efforts to fight HIV infection and AIDS, which claims the lives of 16 Kenyans every hour.
"AIDS is stealing Kenya's future," Albright told several hundred children and young adults gathered at a local health ministry office here after watching an energetic and educational dance routine aimed at youth education about the deadly disease.
"It has already reduced life expectancy by 15 years and turned back the clock on development," she said, praising Kenya for establishing a comprehensive HIV/AIDS policy but imploring Nairobi to do more.
"There is much more to do and there is no time to lose," Albright said, offering U.S. assistance in whatever form possible.
The AIDS pandemic has left Kenya, along with many other African countries, swimming in a sea of grim statistics. An average of 500 people per day die of the disease in Kenya and between 13 and 14 percent of all adults, about 1.9 million people, are infected with HIV, the virus that causes it, according the health ministry.
As many as 760,000 Kenyans have already died of the disease and with some 200,000 expected to contract HIV this year, the government estimates their deaths are causing an economic loss to the country of 2.7 million dollars a day.