JAKARTA: Large parts of Asia are beginning to experience an Aids epidemic and the region will probably overtake Africa as the most heavily affected area in the world unless firm action is taken quickly, a report commissioned by the United Nations said.
The study by the non-governmental organization Monitoring the Aids Pandemic (MAP) Network says: “In the last two years, the picture has changed dramatically. After more than a decade of comparatively low HIV infection levels in most population groups, there is recent evidence of rapidly growing epidemics in some populations and geographic areas.”
Parts of China, Indonesia and Vietnam are among the areas experiencing the sharpest increases.
Intravenous drug users and sex workers are most at risk.
Speaking at the presentation of the report in Melbourne, Australia, on the eve of the sixth International Congress on Aids in Asia and the Pacific, the UNAids executive director, Peter Piot, said that it was no longer possible to ignore the scale of the crisis.
“We are kidding ourselves if we think Asia is not at risk from a major Aids epidemic, it is already there,” he said.
“Today I think about a third or 40 per cent of the world’s people with HIV are living in Asia.”
Two months ago China admitted that it was facing a “very serious” Aids epidemic. HIV cases had risen by two thirds in a year.
In Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, HIV the infection rate among sex workers and their clients increased to more than 20 per cent last year from virtually zero in 1996. Indonesia recorded a jump in HIV among sex workers in three provinces from six per cent to 26 per cent.
It is of small comfort, the report says, that HIV/Aids infection is usually concentrated in certain geographical areas and in people involved in the sex trade or using drugs.
“The good news for Asia is that because the majority of the population does not engage in high-risk behaviour, focusing on those who do is both affordable and effective,” the report says.
Many people working in the field agree with the findings.
Steve Wignall, of Family Health International (FHI), said the situation would deteriorate rapidly if the spread of the condition was not brought under control quickly. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
