Inter Press Service - May 28, 1999
Pilar Franco

Some 50 scientists and health officials from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama met this week in the city of Tapachula, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, to coordinate actions designed to curb the spread of AIDS (acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome). Also taking part in the May 25-26 gathering were representatives of the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

In Mexico, 36,500 cases of AIDS have been registered since 1983, and some 200,000 people are estimated to be living with HIV (human immuno-deficiency virus), which causes AIDS, it was reported at the Tapachula gathering.

AIDS is the third leading cause of death in Mexico among men aged 25 to 44, and the sixth cause of death among women in that age group.

Mexico ranks second in Latin America in terms of the number of AIDS cases, surpassed only by Brazil, said Jorge Enrique Celaya, a UNAIDS consultant. He warned that the spread of HIV among migrant populations in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean was "disturbing."

Celaya identified the border zone between Ciudad Hidalgo in Chiapas and Tecum-Uman, Guatemala, where "people engage in conduct that puts them at risk of contracting HIV" as "a special high risk case."

The experts and officials said the governments in question should make use of condoms mandatory in brothels operating in border areas. Annual condom use in Mexico averages a mere 0.5 per person.

Although the government promotes the use of the condom as the best AIDS-prevention method, non-governmental organisations say police have arrested activists for distributing condoms in public.

Participants in the meeting also agreed to recommend stricter controls by migration authorities and the foreign relations and labour ministries of the countries in question.

Monitoring and surveillance measures applied along routes frequented by rural day labourers and others seeking jobs outside their places of origin must be coordinated by the countries represented in Tapachula, they emphasised.

Such measures would favour implementation of a joint epidemiological programme to detect new hotbeds of transmission and track the spread of HIV in the region.

The experts stressed that they were not promoting measures against the cross-border movement of persons, nor against the rights of migrants. Along Mexico's southern border, more attention will be trained on prostitutes, agricultural day labourers, street children and sailors - "the sectors at highest risk of contracting and spreading AIDS," said Guillermo Egremy, with the National Council of AIDS Prevention and Control (Conasida).

Egremy pointed out that the city government of Ciudad Hidalgo, the main point of access between Mexico and Guatemala, has already made the use of condoms obligatory in brothels, and carries out regular medical check-ups among the highest-risk population. (END/IPS/tra-so/pf/ff/sw/99)
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