AEGiS-Bangkok Post: Editorial: Burma denial puts people at risk

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Editorial: Burma denial puts people at risk

Bangkok Post - January 7, 2001

An American medical study has dramatically demonstrated the dangers of denial of the Aids epidemic. Data revealed important differences in knowledge about Aids between Burmese living in border refugee camps and Burmese workers-most of them illegal immigrants. Briefly put, people in the refugee camps had better education, more knowledge and were less at risk to HIV and Aids infections. The illegal immigrants were a vector for the spread of the virus and subsequent diseases.

The dangers of denial have long been discussed and generally accepted by medical authorities. Indeed, Thailand has often been praised for the quality of its anti-Aids programmes through education. But the field study by Johns Hopkins University is one of the first, and extremely compelling pieces of evidence of just how important it is to let people know the truth about Aids.

Thailand went through a period of denial after the first outbreak of the epidemic. Before authorities recognised the dangers of Aids, tens of thousands of citizens were already infected. Since then, a coalition of government and private groups has fought HIV/Aids in a responsible way. Thailand has not defeated this epidemic, but the growth of Aids in our country has stopped.

That modest achievement is at risk. The influx of refugees and illegal workers is not directly to blame. Rather, it is the inability of the Burmese regime to accept the fact of a major epidemic. In recent weeks, members of the Rangoon dictatorship have again announced that Burma cannot have an Aids problem, because their people do not practice illicit sex. The Johns Hopkins study fills in the missing pieces. It proves that Burmese are uninformed or misinformed about Aids by their leaders.

Such blindness would be sad if it were not so dangerous. Diseases know no borders, and neither HIV nor Aids recognises races or nationality. Yet, Burma allows no school classes on Aids, prohibits the promotion of condoms and bars all health studies by international experts. The United Nations has estimated Burma has a minimum of 700,000 Aids cases and 50,000 deaths. There is no way to verify these figures, but no one any longer believes the Burmese regime's denials.

Many believe that Burma is a victim of its own policies. Denial is deeply steeped in the political system. The military junta must deny its close associations with the drug trade-and therefore is forced to deny that there is a serious drug addiction problem among Burmese. Therefore, as the denial-lie becomes larger, there are no needle-sharing drug addicts of Rangoon, Mandalay and other cities. And they cannot spread Aids through their needles or their after-drugs sex.

The Johns Hopkins study among Burmese workers in Thailand showed that 85% of married women had never seen a condom. A shocking 13% of all the men had never used a condom, even once. More than half believed that birth control pills would prevent Aids.

This is the attitude that Burmese bring to Thailand. More importantly, this is the knowledge that all Burmese have in their own country. It may be worse than that. There is no way to tell how many of the Burmese picked up even their tiny amount of education about Aids in Thailand.

The Burmese regime will pay dearly for suppressing information and education about Aids. But there will not just be Burmese victims. The neighbours of Burma, including Thailand, are at risk. Even a fast change on Aids, along with an educational programme, will solve little.

The Burmese dictators must stop promoting and profitting from the drug trafficking. This is the root of the country's political, social and health problems. So long as the regime is locked into a dependency on drug-dealing political allies, it is not free to work on the nation's most serious difficulties.
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