Rapid Asian growth leads to AIDS problems: Experts

Rapid Asian growth leads to AIDS problems: Experts

MANILA (AFP): The rapid opening and growth of Asian economies
has magnified the threat of AIDS in the world's most populous
region, but the solution lies in a shift away from risky behavior
not economic policies, experts gathered here said yesterday.

They said the deadly disease was affecting mostly the poor,
making them even poorer, and national policies, to be effective,
should include poverty alleviation programs.

"Everybody says that opening of the economy is good for you in
the long run, but there is also a cost to this," said Asian
Development Bank (ADB) economist Myo Thant.

Peter Godwin, regional chief technical advisor on Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) for the UN Development Program,
said growing economies created demand for labor, which in turn
brought about migration.

"In economies and social situations where people move by labor
migration, tourism, the virus will move with them," he told a
news conference at the end of a three-day conference on the
economic cost of AIDS in Asia.

In this situation "young men with money in their pockets are
incredibly at risk," he said. Being far from home they get lonely
and are "more likely to do things that otherwise they would not."

The ADB has estimated at least one million Asians have the
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which leads to AIDS. The
World Health Organization said Asia could account for 30 percent
of the projected 30 million-to-40 million HIV cases worldwide by
2000.

Conference officials said Asian countries were still not sure
how to deal with the epidemic, and the cost was likely to be
borne by individual households due to the lack of widespread
health care and medical insurance.

In most cases, household members care for the sick, pay
medical and funeral expenses and bear the cost of losing a
productive members. The education of children is also affected as
they are pulled out of school to care for the sick, they added.

They declined to estimate the economic cost of AIDS for the
entire region, saying econometric models presented so far were
not accurate.

"It's good copy, but it's not good public health," Myo Thant
said, while Godwin stressed: You've got to look at the conditions
in which people live."

Skills

Madhu Bala Nath, a UNDP regional adviser on AIDS, said: "We
have to inculcate certain behavioral skills in high risk groups."
That, he said, meant in the main practicing safe sex.

The so far incurable disease, which destroys the human body's
immune system, can be transmitted by sexual contact, blood
transfusions, contaminated intravenous needles, and from a mother
to her baby.

Godwin said governments needed to prepare not just HIV-AIDS
programs but also "poverty alleviation, social safety net
programs, and general development programs."

Myo Thant said the ADB was likely to add an HIV component to
its projects, but would not make it a condition for the approval
of loans to member nations.

ADB economist Min Tang said "people really want information on
AIDS," were willing to watch documentaries on the disease, and
were prepared to pay more for screened blood and clean,
disposable needles.

But Godwin said "it has been surprising how uninformed people
are."

While there was widespread awareness of AIDS, he said, some
people still believe they could contract HIV by kissing and
hugging.