Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Miami Herald - Friday, October 5, 2001
The rise is mostly among those in high risk groups, such as injecting drug users, sex workers and homosexual men, the Status and Trends of HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific report said.
The study, by the nongovernment organization Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic (MAP) Network and commissioned by the United Nations, was released ahead of the 6th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, which starts today in Australia.
The report is a wake-up call to many governments and AIDS workers in Asia, who until now have dismissed the HIV epidemic as an African problem, where 25.3 million people are infected with the virus, according to UNAIDS, the U.N. body that deals with its responses to HIV/AIDS.
At the time of the last monitoring report on Asia in 1999, only Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia were reporting substantial nationwide HIV epidemics, the report said. A number of states in India and provinces in China were also heavily affected.
"In the last two years, the picture has changed dramatically," the report said.
"Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Nepal and Vietnam . . . have all registered marked increases in HIV infection in recent years, while in China -- home to a fifth of the world's people -- the infection seems to be moving into new groups of the population," it added.
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