Associated Press - Tuesday, September 25, 2001
Vijay Joshi

In a village nearby, a crowd is watching a show in which puppets tell the story of a family devastated by the teenage daughter's misadventure with unsafe sex. The sauna and the puppet show are just two front lines in a war being fought against AIDS in a rural Thai community - a battle whose commanders are monks, students, ex-prostitutes, nurses, doctors and patients. U.N. experts say it is rare for so many sectors of a community to come together to share their expertise in a concerted campaign to tame the spread of the virus that causes AIDS.

Volunteers spread the word about AIDS, promote condom use, care for patients in their homes, provide herbal medicines, give spiritual guidance, and counsel the depressed. And sometimes they are simply a friend to the dying. "People were hopeless before, but now they know they are not alone," said Somsak Supawitkul, the deputy chief of the provincial health office and one of the pioneers of the project.

"The first impact of the project was to put the smile back on people's faces. It made us feel that we had some success," he said.

Started in 1991 by the Mae Chan community hospital, the project was hailed this year by the U.N. Development Program as a "good practice" that can provide lessons to other communities around the world.

"Mae Chan has shown that even if people are dying you can still turn the community around. It is never too late," said Lee-Nah Hsu, manager of UNDP's Southeast Asia AIDS project.

Since she documented the success of Mae Chan on a UNDP Web site, Hsu said, she has been flooded with e-mail requests for information, including one from a Muslim religious leader keen to help HIV patients in his Arab community. Mae Chan, home to 120,000 people, is a fitting place for the program. A hilly and lush farming district, it is in the northern Chiang Rai province, part of the infamous drug-producing "Golden Triangle" straddling the border regions of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.

Chiang Rai is also the AIDS capital of Thailand. Its 1.25 million people are just 1.9 percent of the country's population of 62 million but account for 10 percent of its AIDS cases.

Nearly one million people in Thailand have been infected with HIV. Of them, 300,000 have died.

Health experts think at least 200,000 lives were saved by a successful condom-promotion campaign in 1990-91 that is estimated to have brought the infection rate down by 80 percent.

But the World Bank warned recently that Thailand's government was ignoring prevention strategies. Since 1997, spending for prevention projects has declined by half and now accounts for only 8 percent of the national AIDS budget, about 5 cents per Thai.

Mae Chan is striking a different path with its motto: "Prevention is better than cure."

A decade ago, adults with AIDS here were so sick they couldn't take care of their children. Neither could they handle farming. Spouses were being abandoned. Neighbors were avoiding neighbors. Fear was rife.

Hsu, the UNDP officer, tells the story of Takham Huaychai, who lost his only son to AIDS six years ago. In keeping with Buddhist practices, he organized a feast, but nobody turned up. Hurt by the people's attitude, he opened his land to HIV patients to grow vegetables.

That sowed the seeds of involvement by everyday people in the community. Meanwhile, desperate hospital authorities faced with overcrowding were turning to monks for the care of patients.

Overcoming their reluctance to dabble in anything to do with sex, the monks distributed traditional herbal medicines. The herbs don't promise a miracle cure, giving only symptomatic relief from fatigue or cold or infections such as lesions.

Some monks gave sermons or simply listened to the sick, a soothing balm to many who were shunned by society or were near death.

Somsak, then the head doctor at Mae Chan's only community hospital, realized the clergy's power to provide spiritual healing. He cleared a room in the hospital where 50 monks now take turns giving sermons every weekday.

Somsak also set up a day-care center at the hospital where HIV patients talk about themselves, not unlike group therapy. They grind herbs for medicines and make embroidered cloth handbags, wicker baskets and other handicrafts for sale. Community involvement has gradually expanded.

A youth group - Making Dreams for New Future - holds regular puppet shows in schools and community centers to talk about AIDS, unprotected sex and drugs.
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