Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Sunday, Oct. 24, 1999
Jocelyn Gecker, Associated Press Writer
"We are still at the very beginning of the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the Asia-Pacific," Peter Piot, executive director of the U.N. AIDS Program, said at the 5th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. "There's no room for complacency."
An estimated 7 million people are living with HIV or AIDS in the Asia-Pacific. At the opening of the four-day conference, experts urged the region to learn a lesson from Africa, which has 21 million cases that account for two-thirds of the world's infections.
"What one hopes is that Asian countries won't wait until people start dying in massive numbers before responding with the vigor that is necessary, as has been the case in Africa," Piot said at the conference attended by more than 3,000 scientists, doctors, activists and AIDS sufferers.
Piot and other speakers stressed that Asia had yet to feel the full impact of the AIDS epidemic. A recent United Nations report said HIV infections in the Asia-Pacific region increased by 70 percent between 1996 and 1998, making Asia the continent with the most rapid growth rate of the disease.
To control the spread of AIDS, speakers Sunday suggested the need for sex education -- which is not allowed in many Asian schools. They highlighted new AIDS-related laws and condom-distribution programs that have been productive in some Asian countries, such as Thailand and the Philippines. Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, on Saturday demanded that pharmaceutical companies lower the cost of HIV drugs for poorer nations, which are unable to take advantage of expensive breakthroughs in AIDS research. He spoke at the conference's opening ceremony.
Speakers echoed that call Sunday, saying more than 90 percent of people with HIV and AIDS live in the developing world and only a tiny fraction have access to anti-viral treatments.
Mieko Nishimizu, vice president for South Asia at the World Bank, urged governments to seize this "golden opportunity to act early" and place the AIDS epidemic at the center of national policy agendas.
"AIDS threatens Asia. AIDS threatens to reduce, halt and even reverse economic growth of Asia," he said. "It threatens to kill the people of Asia at their prime productive years. It threatens to tear apart the very social fabric of Asia."
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