UN says China slow to fight AIDS, praises Thailand

UN says China slow to fight AIDS, praises Thailand

Agence France-Presse, New Delhi

China and Myanmar are not doing enough to prevent the spread of
AIDS, a UN report said on Monday, praising Thailand as the Asian
success story for bringing about a decline in the number of new
HIV cases.

China had made slow progress in fulfilling a 2003 pledge to
provide antiretroviral treatment to all who need it, warned the
AIDS Epidemic Update 2005 released in the New Delhi ahead of
World AIDS day on Dec. 1.

"By June 2005, about 20,000 people were receiving the drugs in
28 provinces and autonomous regions," the report said.

The majority of China's cases were detected in Yunnan and
Henan provinces in the Guangxi autonomous region, it said, adding
the least affected areas "for the moment" were Qinghai province
and the Tibet autonomous region.

HIV cases had been found in all 31 provinces of China, the
UN's annual report said, warning that the combination of
commercial sex and injecting drug use "is likely to become the
main driver of China's epidemic."

China officially has an estimated 840,000 people infected with
HIV, including 80,000 with full-blown AIDS. The prevalence rate
is 0.1 percent.

"In Myanmar, limited prevention efforts led HIV to spread
freely -- at first within the most at-risk groups and later
beyond them. Consequently Myanmar had one of the most serious
AIDS epidemics in the region," it said.

In contrast, Thailand offered something of a success story in
the fight against AIDS.

"By 2003 the estimated national adult HIV prevalence had
dropped to its lowest level ever, approximately 1.5 percent," the
report said but noted that only 51 percent of Thai sex workers
reported using condoms.

Indonesia and Pakistan were warned of being on the "brink" a
major epidemic and urged to speed up "their responses if they are
to avoid serious HIV epidemics."

In Indonesia, the "rapidly worsening AIDS epidemic (was)
mainly due to injecting drug use," while in Pakistan, the
combination of risky behavior and limited knowledge among
injecting drug users and sex workers "favors the rapid spread of
HIV."

"New data suggests that the country (Pakistan) could be on the
verge of a serious HIV epidemic."

"A major epidemic has already been detected among injecting
drug users in Karachi," the report said, adding "one in five sex
workers cannot recognize a condom and three quarters did not know
that condoms prevented AIDS."

On India, which has more than 5.13 million people living with
HIV/AIDS, second only to South Africa (5.3 million), the world
body said overall HIV prevalence continued to rise as it was
affecting high-risk population groups.

"Transmitted mainly through unprotected sex in southern India
and injecting drug use in the (country's) northeast, HIV is
spreading beyond urban areas," it said.

Large numbers of Indian sex workers were unaware that condoms
could prevent infection while a survey found 42 percent of sex
workers believed they could tell whether a client had HIV on the
basis of his physical appearance, it said.

In Bangladesh and the Philippines, HIV prevalence has been low
but there were signs the situation could change for the worse,
the report warned.

Asia accounts for roughly 20 percent, or 8.3 million people,
of the 40 million plus people infected with HIV worldwide. But
the prevalence rate remains a relatively low 0.4 percent of the
adult population, according to UNAIDS.

Injecting drug use is the strongest initial driver of HIV
infection in Asia, the report said.

"The majority of drug users are sexually active ... large
proportions of them buy or sell sex," causing the large-scale
spread of the disease, it said.

This process was "well underway" in several Asian countries
including Indonesia and China and unless halted early would cause
"millions of new HIV infections."