Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Tuesday June 26, 2001

Northern Territory Chief Minister Denis Burke said one Australian woman in Darwin had already contracted HIV from a visiting UN worker from East Timor.

Burke said if the UN did not begin screening its workers to prevent the spread of HIV in East Timor and Australia, the Australian government should consider restricting the visa that allows UN staff to visit the city of Darwin.

Darwin is a short plane ride south of East Timor and was used by the United Nations to launch its peacekeeping operation into East Timor after an independence vote from Indonesia in 1999.

"Not only is the health and well-being of territorians at stake, but so too is that of the people of East Timor," Burke told a news conference. "I believe that if the UN is serious about tackling AIDS globally, they should start in their own backyard," he said.

Burke said his territory's government had confirmed the United Nations was not testing its personnel in East Timor for HIV, but that 10 cases had been diagnosed by the Royal Darwin Hospital.

He said the majority of reports of HIV infection in East Timor since September 1999, when the tiny nation gained its independence in a bloody separation from Indonesia, had been "on foreign nationals from high HIV prevalence countries."

He also pointed to concerns about increasing numbers of unscreened peacekeepers or other UN workers coming from African countries with a high incidence of AIDS.

The United Nations has about 7,900 peacekeepers, 1,400 police and 2,700 civilian staff--877 of them foreigners--in East Timor until it achieves full independence, expected by the end of 2001.

Burke quoted an Australian doctor who had worked at a clinic in the East Timor capital of Dili as saying he knew of "almost a dozen" Australian expatriates who had been diagnosed with HIV.

"These cases may well represent the start of the 'third phase' of the HIV epidemic--widespread transmission among the heterosexual population--in Australia, among northern Australians," he said.

East Timor itself is extremely vulnerable to an AIDS epidemic, given its poor health infrastructure and its Catholic roots--which mean it is relatively uneducated in safe sex measures, according to Northern Territory AIDS Unit chief Jan Savage.

"The last thing it needs and the last thing it can deal with is an HIV epidemic," Savage told the news conference.

More than 5 million new cases of AIDS were reported in 2000, according to UNAIDS, the UN agency that spearheads the global battle against the disease.

Africa is by far the worst hit by AIDS, and is home to 70% of adults and 80% of children living with HIV. In some African nations, one in three adults has the virus.

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