InterPress News Service (IPS); Monday, 28 April 1997.
Rupa Chinai and Rahul Goswami

KOHIMA, India, Apr 28 (PANOS) - The expanding heroin trade in Southeast Asia's 'Golden Triangle' - the world's largest source of illicitly grown pure heroin - is bringing with it a wave of new HIV/AIDS infections in Myanmar and a remote corner of India.

The Golden Triangle comprises 38 million hectares of rainforest- covered mountains in Laos, Thailand and Myanmar (formerly Burma).

Bordering Myanmar are three northeastern Indian states - Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland. Sometimes racked by insurgency and girded by the Himalayan mountains, these states are among the poorest in India and, for the most part, close to foreigners for security reasons.

But not to the opium trade evidently.

On both sides of the border, opium and heroin addiction is destroying tribal populations, while contributing to an alarming rise in HIV infection and AIDS. Underdevelopment in Myanmar in particular is fuelling an opiu m-driven economy, which depends not only on opium cultivation but also its use as a means of barter.

In India's northeastern states - there are seven altogether - large sections of the youth are now threatened by a rising HIV infection, drug and alcohol abuse and other chronic killers such as malaria and tuberculosis.

''Millions of migrants are pouring out of Myanmar into China, India and Thailand, carrying HIV with them,'' says the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board's 1997 report.

In Myanmar, needle sharing, a proliferation of brothels, lack of public awaeess campaigns and a weak public health infrastructure have contributed to an explosion in the number of HIV-positive cases, 'The Nation' magazine of New York reported last December.

The UN reports that 60-70 percent of intravenous drug users in Myanmar are HIV-positive.

Myanmar-wide HIV figures cited by the United States' Bureau of the Census are equally disturbing. Surveillance at 20 sites in 1995 found infection rates of 18.2 percent among prostitutes, 10 percent among patients of sexually transmitted diseases and 55.2 percent among injecting drug users.

The World Health Organisation believes there are 500,000 heroin addicts in Myanmar - or one percent of its population. The Southeast Asian Information Network, a Thai nongovernmental organisation (NGO) working on AIDS prevention, says the real figure may be two to four times higher.

Over the Indian border in Manipur, rates of HIV infection among intravenous drug users jumped from zero in 1988 to nearly 70 percent in 1992, according to the US Census Bureau. Infection rates in the region are among the highest in India.

''We know there is a lot of movement (of heroin),'' K.N. Singh, a police officer in the border town of Moreh, said.

''About 1,000 people come and go every day. There are searches but we hardly ever find anything - when we do, its through tip-offs from sources. Many people are involved. Last year a senior police officer was arrested and imprisoned for trade in marijuana,'' he added.

Today's heroin trade follows old opium routes of the British colonial era and takes advantage of porous borders.

In Mon, a Nagaland border district, large groups of Myanmarese youth, walking for days, recently arrived as refugees fleeing poverty in Myanmar.

Many brought opium with them. ''This is the only medicine we have,'' said one refugee.

Another teenage refugee said she had walked 18 days through north- west Myanmar to reach Mon. She spoke of villages heavily affected by tuberculosis, with no local primary health care and where every family grows opium.

A report by a Myanmar-based NGO and smuggled out of the country corroborates the account. It documents widespread opium cultivation and addiction in virtually every village in the Chin province of northern Myanmar, bordering India.

In Hpa Kant in Kachin State - famous for its jade - about 50 percent of the youth are thought to be addicts.

While several UN agencies have been conducting AIDS awareness and prevention programe for many years in Myanmar, there appear to be constraints affecting health projects in the northern provinces.

These have been waging an insurgency against the Myanmar regime and the state authorities are wary of any community activity.

In 1994, a US public health expert reported that Myanmar did not allow regional programmes to warn people in Kachin and Shan states about AIDS.

Community-based organisations are not allowed to exist and ethnic- or Burmese-language materials are banned. Reports from the Indian Intelligence Bureau, the Indian Army, the Konyak Mother's Association and refugees interviewed for this article suggest little has changed.

''There are no roads, no schools, no medicines, no doctors, no communications in the villages on the other side,'' say the Reverend Yamyap Konyak of the Baptist Church in Mon.

Indian border police and customs officials admit that considerable amounts of heroin pass into India, but there are no reliable figures.

The recent opening of a trading post with Myanmar facilitates the trade. And the border is so open, anyone can walk through with a headload.

Heads of anti-narcotics agencies of India and Myanmar have held several meetings to work out a joint offensive against the drug trade. But little has changed. The Indian Narcotics Bureau struggles for funds and has only 380 employees country-wide.

For Nagaland and Manipur, the combination of HIV and drug abuse is having devastating consequences, especially for the youth.

In 1996, 28 young people died from drug abuse in Mon town alone, according to Father Joe, who works at a drug rehabilitation cli nic there. He says he doesn't know how many have HIV, because there are no testing facilities. (END/PANOS/RC-RG/DDS/97)

970428
IP970414

AEGiS presents published material, reprinted with permission and neither endorses nor opposes any material. All information contained on this website, including information relating to health conditions, products, and treatments, is for informational purposes only. It is often presented in summary or aggregate form. It is not meant to be a substitute for the advice provided by your own physician or other medical professionals. Always discuss treatment options with a doctor who specializes in treating HIV.

Copyright ©1980, 1997. AEGiS. All materials appearing on AEGiS are protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and are the property of AEGiS, or the party credited as the provider of the content. .