No truce possible in war against AIDS

While the ravages of AIDS in the Asia-Pacific do not, so far, challenge those in Africa, the staging of the 15th International AIDS Conference in Thailand this week has focussed overdue attention on AIDS in our region.

To base any assessment on the relatively benign picture in Australia and New Zealand, where there will be about 100 deaths from AIDS this year, would lead to unjustified complacency. HIV/AIDS is on the rise throughout the Asia-Pacific region, with more than 7.4 million people infected. Papua New Guinea, the second-largest South Pacific nation in terms of population, has the highest infection rates in the region.

An enormous breakthrough in the fight against AIDS in developing countries arrived last year when the World Trade Organization agreed to allow them to ignore patents on drugs and import cheap generic copies from countries such as India.

Over time this reform, along with the direct donation of drugs by richer countries, will help to sort out the appalling imbalance between those receiving antiretroviral drugs in the West and in the developing world: Fewer than half a million people receive treatment in the developing world, with more than 5 million infected in South Africa alone.

But while treatment has surely been made more available to sufferers in poor countries, experts warn that diagnosis has not: the overwhelming majority of the 38 million people infected with HIV do not know they have it. Testing kits are expensive, but the biggest problem is not economic: People simply don't want to be told they have a disease that will condemn them to social stigmatization and -- they reason -- certain death. Aggressive new education campaigns are needed to encourage more people to be tested, so they can then be treated.

A new generation of gay men has grown up not having to watch their friends and lovers die -- and when they look at those living with HIV now, they do not see the walking skeletons of the 1980s.

-- The Australian, Sydney