Inter Press Service - October 23, 1999
Johanna Son

These were the themes that dominated the opening day here Saturday of the Fifth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), which is being attended more than 3,000 people from 67 countries. It runs until Oct 27 here in the Malaysian capital.

As it is, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told the opening ceremony here, the developing world bears the brunt of deaths from the HIV/AIDS pandemic but lacks the clout and means to ensure better treatment for its people living the disease.

"AIDS has augmented the divide between North and South, between the haves and have-nots. What is the worse is that the have-nots will have less, because of AIDS," Mahathir said.

At present, 95 percent of people with HIV are in the developing world, which has also experienced 95 percent of all deaths from AIDS.

But while AIDS deaths in the U.S. and some other industrialised countries are slowing due to better treatment options, developing countries are getting more infections but can hardly afford to provide adequate care.

"Hospices for people with AIDS are being closed in the UK and Switzerland, but in developing countries, people cannot even set up hospices," Mahathir pointed out. "There is not enough bed space in hospitals for people with AIDS."

"Whether measured against the yardstick of deteriorating child survival, crumbling life expectancy, overburdened health care systems, increasing orphanhood or bottom-line losses to businesses, AIDS has never posed a bigger threat to development as it is now," he added.

More than 7 million people in the Asia-Pacific are estimated to have HIV, which causes AIDS. Each year, nearly 700,000 people aged 14-25 years get HIV in the region.

According to the Joint UN Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS), Asia accounted for 1.4 million of 5.8 million new HIV infections in 1998.

More than a decade since the first cases of AIDS were reported, the pandemic has begun to take more lives in the region as the years progress.

While four-fifths of all deaths from AIDS in 1998 were in sub- Saharan Africa, in parts of Asia the speed by which the pandemic has taken root is alarming health and development workers.

As Lisa Messersmith of the US' Ford Foundation said: "Asia has the world's fastest growing AIDS epidemic. . . In many countries in the region the personal, social and economic impact of AIDS on those currently in their most productive years is already being felt."

HIV/AIDS is "beginning to spread in earnest through the vast populations of India and China", according to a United Nations briefing paper here. For instance, it estimates that by next year, a third of deaths in the working population in Thailand will be due to AIDS -- despite its successful record in curbing new HIV infections.

Apart from the usual lack of funds by developing countries for treatment, Mahathir said develping countries should get together to "challenge" pharmaceutical companies to produce cheaper medicines to benefit the overwhelming majority of people with HIV/AIDS.

"It is no longer enough to say 'no money'," said one person with HIV who addressed the opening rites.

"I have had HIV for 10 years, but until today I dare not think of treatment because of the cost," Eugene of the Pink Triangle group in Malaysia told the assembly Saturday.

Mahathir said it was time to allow compulsory licensing of life- saving drugs, which he stresses is allowed by the rules of the World Ttrade Organisation. "But it is sad to see certain powerful countries aligning themselves with giant pharmaceutical companies to deny developing countries the right to produce cheaper drugs to save the lives of their people," he argued.

"Profit is taking precedent over people's lives," he said. While companies understandably want to recoup investments in research, Mahathir said they "should not try to recoup from the suffering of the poor".

While Mahathir gave no specifics, he was clearly referring to the controversy surrounding drug companies who claim violation of intellectual property rights when AIDS-affected countries produce those drugs in order to make them cheaper.

Battling the social stigma that HIV/AIDS entails is another major front in the battle against the disease, agreed Mahathir, Dr Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and representatives of people living with HIV/AIDS.

"The reasons for fighting this stigma are practical," said Piot, who warned against complacency in battling HIV/AIDS because the rate of infection can pick up with "frightening speed".

Fighting discrimination made "practical" sense because it makes education about HIV/AIDS difficult, discourages people from testing and seeking counselling, and in turn makes it harder to provide adequate care and support for people who have the disease, he explained.

As it is, Eugene of Pink Triangle, which groups people with HIV/AIDS and the people who care for them, said "most of us live double lives".

One is the daily life that people who do not know about their HIV-positive status see, while the other one is that of "people constantly worrying if people will know about their status and change their attitude toward them", he explained.

"Some people would rather not believe that this happens, but we have trouble getting jobs and decent treatment at hospitals," Eugene added. (END/IPS/ap-he-dv/js/99) .
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