BANGKOK, Dec 16 (AFP) - Thousands of AIDS activists, researchers and public health officials will convene in northern Thailand this week for talks on patient care in the first meeting of its kind in Asia, organisers said Sunday.

The Fifth International Conference on Home and Community Care for Persons Living with HIV/AIDS from December 17-20 in the Thai city of Chiang Mai will serve as a global forum on treatment and support for sufferers worldwide.

The four-day event is expected to draw together an estimated 700 foreign delegates and some 2,000 Thai HIV/AIDS workers and patients to mull a range of issues including discrimination against people with the deadly virus.

"It's the first time this conference has been held outside the industrialised world, in the East," Stefan Seebacher, regional chief for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) told AFP.

Shifting the conference to Asia would help draw attention to the growing regional epidemic, he added.

"It's very clear the epidemic has entered Indonesia, and there has been more in the north of Vietnam," Seebacher said.

"We have had some success in Cambodia where the numbers are more stable. And of course people are concerned about Myanmar."

He said the issues will hinge on providing care, from "pure support and community care for different groups to the whole issue of discrimination and stigmatisation, to human rights."

Seebacher added that the conference would also debate access to care -- particularly to anti-retroviral drugs in developing countries -- clinical treatment and international research in workshops.

The event co-sponsored by the Thai Red Cross, the Thai government and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and previously held in Europe was moved to Thailand because it is a regional vanguard against AIDS.

"In Asia, Thailand is on the forefront of HIV/AIDS response," Seebacher said. "In terms of people affected and need for care, it is one of the countries that is most relevant. It's a champion of AIDS response in Asia."

A million Thais are estimated to have contracted AIDS while a third of those have already died.

Some 180,000 Thais have contracted HIV this year and about 68,000 have developed full-blown AIDS, according to the health ministry's AIDS division.

Despite having one of the worst AIDS records in Asia, Thailand has excelled at launching educational campaigns aimed at stemming the spread of the deadly HIV virus.

Bernard Gardiner, regional manager of HIV/AIDS programs for the Australian Red Cross, told AFP the meet would be a valuable opportunity for international AIDS groups to exchange ideas.

"It's enabling Red Cross societies from all over world to come together and learn from each other," he said. "For Asian societies it's good because we can learn from our African brothers who have been dealing with it a lot longer."

"We can look at their experiences and learn from it ... it's a very rich dialogue between societies."

011216
AF0112A5

Copyright © AFP or Agence France-Presse, 2001 - All Rights Reserved. AFP articles contained on the AEGiS web site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without AFP's prior written permission. You may make one copy of each article for your personal, non-commercial use only; more copies would require AFP's prior written permission..  http://www.afp.com/

ÆGiS is made possible through unrestricted grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, the National Library of Medicine, and donations from users like you. Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2001. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

©1990, 2001 - ÆGiS. ÆGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All materials appearing on ÆGIS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of ÆGIS and the Sisters of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, or the party credited as the provider of the content.