BANGKOK, Dec 20 (AFP) - The fight against HIV-AIDS must be waged by a wider array of organisations, including those outside the field of healthcare, if the epidemic is to be contained globally, the Red Cross said Thursday.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said at the conclusion of the first meeting on HIV-AIDS patient care in Asia that the virus would spread unless organisations such as itself got involved.
"The national health services are not enough to contain the epidemic globally," Dr. Alvaro Bermejo, the federation's head of health and community care, told AFP.
"Organisations like the Red Cross and other organisations that are not necessarily AIDS organisations need to cooperate more," he said. "Unless we at the Red Cross and others get involved, we will never contain it."
He added that partnerships among humanitarian groups and HIV-AIDS patients across the globe had improved understanding about the deadly virus, but that more needed to be done to ease the stigma surrounding the disease.
The Red Cross, for example, had made strides by working closely with UNAIDS which has provided "training tools" such as patient care manuals for distribution through the vast Red Cross international network, he said.
Bermejo lauded the heroes who have set up HIV-AIDS prevention programs in a closing speech at the conference in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, but added "there will never be enough heroes".
He also warned that even countries with a low prevalence of the virus needed to shift resources to patient care while maintaining prevention efforts.
Peter Walker, head of the federation's regional delegation for Southeast Asia, told AFP that "there is no country that can feel complacent and say it's not my problem".
"We were looking at statistics for Indonesia and saw an exponential increase in the last 2-3 years," he said. "Now the virus is out in the population. They're where Thailand was 10-15 years ago.
"There is nowhere to hide from this," Walker said, adding that some 3,500 people -- hundreds more than expected -- attended this week's Fifth International Conference on Home and Community Care for Persons Living with HIV/AIDS.
Activists, researchers and public health officials convened in Chiang Mai Monday for the global forum on treatment and support for sufferers worldwide.
In a series of workshops and lectures, participants who included members of the business community whose workforce was affected by HIV-AIDS, mulled a range of issues including discrimination against people with the deadly virus.
The event, which takes place every two years, will next be held in July 2003 in Dakar, Senegal.
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