InterPress News Service (IPS) - Monday, January 12, 1998
Satya Sivaraman

The objective is to enlist Thailand's monks -- whose influence reaches deep into the countryside -- in the battle against the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the country's number one health problem.

After years of notoriety as the Asian country most affected by HIV/AIDS, Thailand is fighting back against the pandemic thanks to a multitude of efforts by government and non-government agencies, community self-help groups and individuals.

Experts see the project to encourage Buddhist monks to play a major role in counselling both people with HIV and non-affected populations as a good example of how Thailand is using its `cultural resources' to battle the pandemic.

Started just six months ago with funds from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the project has already reached out to monasteries throughout northern Thailand.

"The temple is the center of the community so monks have a powerful role to play," says Lawrence Maund, a Buddhism scholar and coordinator of the project. Monasteries, where millions of Thai youth study, receive moral instructions and are initiated into monkhood for a period of their lives, have so far been untouched by HIV/AIDS educators, he said. Thus, involving them could unleash tremendous social forces, he added.

Some senior Thai Buddhist clergy have traditionally frowned upon monks discussing HIV/AIDS issues, seeing them as being linked to the commercial sex industry. But the UNICEF project has drawn enthusisatic response from young monks, many of whom have watched family members and friends die of AIDS in their villages.

Several monasteries in northern Thailand now run meditation centers, counselling services and income generation activities for people living with HIV -- a development which has greatly reduced the social fear and discrimination against them.

There are other efforts by groups and communities to step up the battle against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

In the northern province of Chiang Mai, which has the largest number of people with HIV in Thailand, there are already more than 60 organisations tackling various aspects of the problem. Many are run and organised by people with HIV themselves who are struggling, quite successfully so, to battle discrimination and lead normal lives.

In fact, experts say that Thailand could well become a model for other Asian and developing countries in generating positive action from local communities, as well as those affected by the pandemic themselves, to deal with HIV/AIDS.

While India has the most number of people with HIV due to the sheer size of its population, Thailand has the biggest percentage of people with the virus -- and is thus where the impact is most dramatic. Out of 60 million Thais, nearly one million are now believed to have the HIV virus. Of these, those with AIDS number nearly 75,000, and more than 20,000 have died of the disease.

"In the early nineties, it was estimated that nearly four million people in Thailand will be HIV-positive by the year 2000 and nearly 150,000 would have died of AIDS. But that is not likely to be true primarily due to the efforts of organisations fighting the pandemic," said Dr Usa Duongsa, secretary of the AIDSNET Foundation.

Funded by the Australian government, the newly formed foundation is an offshoot of the Northern AIDS Prevention and Care Program (NAPAC), which for four years now has built up and backed community groups and NGOs working in northern Thailand.

While in the initial years after the first AIDS case was detected in 1984, much of the task of educating the public was done by government agencies and a few Bangkok-based NGOs, now the effort is spreading deeper into rural areas. This is particularly so in northern Thailand, which accounts for nearly half of all the country's HIV cases.

"In recent years we have begun emphasising capacity building of individuals and communities to both protect themselves and help others. The government cannot handle everything on its own, especially with the economic downturn the country is going through" said Dr Chavalit Natprathan, director of the Ministry of Public Health's Communicable Disease Centre in the north.

Some efforts are led by people like Samra, an interior designer who found he had AIDS in 1989 and now heads the New Life Friend's Association (NLFA). Nine years later, Samran is not only a healthy man leading a normal life but is the leading light of the group which has nearly 6,000 members with HIV from seven provinces in northern Thailand.

"When we first started out five years ago, HIV-affected people themselves did not have much confidence in their ability to survive and be accepted by society," recalled Samran.

Thanks to the NLFA's efforts, hundreds of people with HIV find moral support in discussing problems openly with each other, and learn how to live normal lives free of fear. This has forced people to respect them and stop discriminating against them.

But there is a major problem to be tackled -- looking after hundreds of children orphaned by the HIV/AIDS pandemic all over Thailand, particularly in the northern and north-eastern areas.

Though charity groups have set up nurseries and orphanages to look after the children, many of whom are HIV-positive, activists worry about the future when the numbers are expected to grow.

A more immediate concern for many HIV/AIDS groups here is the downturn in the economy, which could mean a cut in government spending on medical care for affected people as well as reduced funding for NGOs. The prospect of large-scale unemployment could also translate into more high-risk behaviour by Thai youth, as well as the deprivation of people with HIV of regular incomes.

"More than even medical care, what those affected by HIV need most is high morale and it will be a tough task for us to try and help them maintain that in the current economic situation," said an activist with NLFA. (END/IPS/AP-HE-16/SS/JS/98)

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