InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 13 February 1996.
Akhilesh Upadhyay

Experts warn that by the turn of the century, most new HIV infections in the world will take place in this region. South Asia's share of the deadly disease is estimated to have shot up six times in just as many months from a mere one percent of the world's full-blown AIDS cases in mid-1993.

More than 30 senior officials from the seven regional nations who met here earlier this month to discuss ways to prevent the spread of the killer ailment, agreed the time for complacency was past.

The meet, organised by the World Bank and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), brought together officials from the health, education, tourism, finance and youth ministries of Bangladesh Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

They admitted that till very recently, their countries stubbornly ignored the threat of the spreading AIDS virus, which was dismissed as a largely foreign phenomenon and the result of 'loose' lifestyles. The scant data that were available only helped buttress this myth, it was pointed out.

According to the latest World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics, South Asia has 2,256 AIDS patients with India alone reporting 2095 cases. Sri Lanka and Pakistan have 52 AIDS patients each, Nepal 48, Bangladesh 7, Maldives 2, while Bhutan has none.

This may not sound alarming, compared to some African countries like Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, each of them with more then 39,000 AIDS patients.

"But the figures should not mislead us," warns K.B. Singh Karki, chief of the Nepal Government's AIDS Control and Prevention Programme. "More HIV cases will be reported in future with doctors asking more and more people to go for HIV screening at the slightest suspicion," he adds.

Regional giant India is fast emerging as one of Asia's HIV hot spots. One study estimates that as many as 10 million South Asians will be infected with the AIDS virus by the year 2000.

The meet suggested that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) set up a permanent expert panel on the disease to help formulate a regional approach to the problem.

According to Australian academic Mark Turner who took part in the deliberations, South Asia's response to AIDS has followed what has now become a familiar pattern. Initial denial that AIDS was a problem, let alone a potential epidemic, has been replaced by growing admission that the earlier judgment was incorrect.

"This workshop is testimony to such realizations by the region's decision-makers," he pointed out.

However, the growing awareness of the threat to public health from the spreading HIV infection has not led to an effective response so far, experts say.

There are sharp differences among the nations in the way governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and communities are reacting.

While some South Asian nations have already set up sentinel surveillance and comprehensive AIDS prevention programmes, in others, there is still not enough official awareness of the threat.

There is also no agreement on what constitutes an effective policy response to the epidemic.

However, the Kathmandu meet unanimously supported the suggestion that any effective AIDS prevention and control strategy must take into account inter-regional migration.

"As thousands of Nepalis and Indians travel across the open border each day, fighting AIDS without regional initiatives would be useless," says Karki, the head of Nepal's anti-AIDS programme.

The migrations are bound to increase with countries in the region opening up their economies to each other.

"There's no point in either Nepal or India carrying out AIDS prevention and control programmes without these activities covering both the migrant's destination and his home," Peter Godwin, head of UNDP's South Asian AIDS scheme, pointed out.

A regional anti-AIDS drive must also tackle the sex trade which lures away thousands of poor Nepalese girls from their village homes to the brothels of India's big cities.

"South Asian countries have the opportunity to take effective measures now and avoid facing a crisis in the near future," warned Michael Porter of the World Bank. (End/IPS/AU/MU/96)

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