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World AIDS Day in Asia
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ASIA MARKS WORLD AIDS DAY BUT TABOOS REMAIN
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Copyright © 1996 Nando.net
Copyright © 1996 Reuter Information Service
HONG KONG (Dec 2, 1996 00:18 a.m. EST) - Asians marked World AIDS Day
on Sunday with calls to halt the spread of the epidemic, but experts
warned that a lack of education and sexual taboos ensure the killer
disease will continue to run rampant in the region.
Two, 18-meter high red ribbons, the symbol of international AIDS
awareness, adorned the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia while
thousands of people in Thailand distributed condoms at massage parlors
and even gas stations.
In Manila, 500 members of HIV/AIDS Network Philippines released
hundreds of red balloons marked with the words "World AIDS Day" while
awareness groups in Tokyo opened a round-the-clock telephone
counselling service in eight languages and hot lines for Japanese
women and homosexuals.
As many remembered the dead and dying, health experts in India, the
world's second most populous nation, warned the most horrific toll may
still be to come.
The number of people infected with the HIV (human immunodeficiency
virus) in India will explode in four years, dwarfing the current level
of about five million cases, an expert with the Indian Health
Organization said on Sunday. HIV causes AIDS.
"By the turn of the century, this is likely to go up to 20 million in
a best-case scenario and 50 million in a worst case scenario," said
I.H. Gilada, the organisation's secretary-general.
Indian officials says widespread prostitution is responsible for
spreading the virus but the IHO assigns part of the blame to official
apathy.
"There has not been enough official attention given to AIDS," Gilada
said. "People are suddenly waking up now that the situation looks like
it's getting out of control."
The forecasts are equally grim for other developing Asian countries.
The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 28 million people
have been infected worldwide with HIV since the start of the epidemic
15 years ago.
But while HIV infection rates are dropping in Europe and the U.S.,
health experts warn that HIV is mushrooming in Asia.
About 800,000 Thais have been infected and that number is expected to
rise to over one million by 2000, the Thai Health Ministry has said.
Up to a million people in Indonesia and 300,000 people in Vietnam are
expected to be infected with HIV by 2000.
Despite Sunday's events, efforts to educate Asia's masses on the
disease are being held back by poor health education and cultural or
religious taboos against open discussion of sex or the use of condoms.
In mainly Muslim Indonesia, where up to one million people are
expected to catch HIV by 2000, the government has said Muslim
sensitivities do not allow it to promote condom use to combat AIDS.
The use of contraceptives is also a sensitive issue in Muslim Malaysia
and Brunei and predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines.
Prudish sexual attitudes and misconceptions also work against AIDS
education efforts in Chinese society, where AIDS is viewed as a
"foreign disease."
At an AIDS expo in Beijing on Sunday, a manufacturer displayed a
toilet seat with an automatic protective covering, saying it would
help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted disease, a myth long
dispelled in the west.
Even in cosmopolitan Hong Kong, sex education is virtually
non-existent in classrooms.
A recent survey found that about 60 percent of 14-year-old girls in
the colony thought they could contract AIDS from kissing or from
toilet seats, and few teenagers knew the facts about contraception,
sexually transmitted diseases or abortion.
"All this is very gloomy but there is some reason for hope," Dr Peter
Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the joint U.N. program on AIDS and
HIV, said recently.
He said studies showed treating sexually transmitted diseases could
greatly cut HIV infection rates, and that education efforts in
Thailand, for example, had cut infection among army recruits. But he
warned the problem will get much worse before it gets better.
"The epidemic is not over -- far from over -- not even close."
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