Wanphen Sreshthaputra, Bangkok Post journalist (Thailand)
“Condom Night” in Bangkok.
|
HIV/Aids in Thailand Out of a population of 59 million, 780,000
people live with HIV/Aids. Among adults in the 15-to-49 age group, 2.23% are HIV-infected,
as are 14,000 children under the age of 15. The epidemic has so far claimed a total
of 230,000 lives. Source: UNAIDS, 1998. |
Through
a sustained national campaign, Thailand has brought its rate of HIV infection under
control, but the economic crisis is casting a shadow over the progress
A survey
conducted in Thailand for the British contraceptive firm Durex, published in December
1998, showed that 60 per cent of those questioned used condoms. Polls taken by UNAIDS
among 21-year-old Thai men found that use of condoms in brothels in northern Thailand
rose from 61 per cent to 93 per cent between 1991 and 1995, while the number of customers
fell by half.
Such changes in sexual behaviour are two solid results of Thailand’s large-scale
effort to fight Aids. Even before the first case was detected in Thailand in 1984,
Mechai Viravaidya (“Mr. Condom”), a family planning pioneer and founder of the Population
and Community Development Association, was publicly singing the praises of condoms.
At first he was accused of tarnishing the country’s image, but then he was congratulated
for his major contribution to halting the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases
(STDs) and Aids.
Non-governmental organizations were the first to support his work but were quickly
overwhelmed. The rapid spread of such diseases spurred the government to launch a
broad mobilization campaign. In 1992, it announced a three-year plan to monitor and
fight Aids. By 1996, the plan’s budget had risen to $82.3 million, an initiative
unmatched in any other country.
Coordinated by the ministry of health, preventive education was gradually taken
over by civil society as a whole. By 1990, even before the plan was launched, television
had become the chief source of information, with the broadcasting of expensive advertising
spots. Rural communities set up solidarity funds and Buddhist monks opened their
temples to ill people rejected by their families. The religious association Sangha
Metta, based at the Buddhist University of Mahamakut, at Chiang Mai, has so far trained
more than 500 monks and nuns to work in prevention and treatment.
In most towns, people with Aids or HIV took action. The New Life Friends association,
set up in 1993, has several hundred members and is doing an impressive job of raising
awareness, especially in schools. Many members are now teaching classes about the
disease.
Complacency
and budget cuts
From the early 1990s,
clinics specializing in treating STDs, whose patients were mostly working in the
sex industry, generously handed out free condoms and pushed brothel owners to encourage
their use. This programme, launched on a national scale in 1991 and known as the
“100 per cent Condom Campaign” is the key to Thailand’s success, according to Wiwat
Rochapichayakhon, the UNAIDS director for the Asia-Pacific region.
But prevention has flagged for the past two years for several reasons. Rochapichayakhon
says people have taken for granted the progress and have become complacent. The head
of the European Union’s Aids programme in Thailand, Alessio Panza, blames a new policy
of targeting specific groups rather than conducting a mass campaign. The chief of
the Aids department in the Thai health ministry, Chaiyos Kunanusont, claims that
the economic and financial crisis that erupted in 1997 is responsible. The budget
to prevent the disease has been cut by a quarter, he complains.
The effect of the economic crisis on the epidemic is unclear. Will the newly-unemployed
end up working in the brothels of Patpong and Pattaya? Or will the falling standard
of living mean fewer customers and so less demand for new sex workers? One thing
is certain: the thousands of people returning to the countryside after losing their
jobs in the towns are already causing sexual health problems in the north and northeast
of Thailand.
