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.