Asia-Pacific face a 'silent tsunami' - AIDS
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-02 15:01

KOBE, Japan - The Asia-Pacific faces a "silent tsunami" as HIV/ AIDS rates surge in a region home to more than half the world's population, a U.N. official said Saturday.

Despite the fact that 99 percent of Asians don't have the virus, in 2004 this region posted the world's second-highest infection rates after sub-Saharan Africa, said JVR Prasada Rao, regional director of the UNAIDS support team for Asia and the Pacific.

Medical personnel assist a Cambodian AIDS patient in Phnom Penh in this November 29, 1999 file photo. AIDS is a silent tsunami that threatens all of Asia, but the deadly disease can still be conquered if governments take urgent action now, world health officials said on July 2, 2005. One in four new infections occurs in Asia and 1,500 die in the region each day. The disease has spread to all provinces in China, the world's most populous nation, while India has the second-highest number of AIDS/HIV patients after South Africa. Photo taken on November 29, 1999. [Reuters]

"The virus doesn't kill hundreds of thousands at a thunderous stroke, and it doesn't provide vivid television pictures," he said during the Seventh International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Kobe, Japan. "Rather, it is a silent tsunami."

Rao said Asia is at a crossroads and must act now or face an explosion of new cases that will quickly move beyond groups usually considered vulnerable, such as sex workers and injecting drug users, and into the general population.

In the mid-1980s, while the United States and Europe grappled with raging epidemics, the percentage of people infected in Asia was undetectable.

In the 1990s, Thailand and Cambodia were Asia's only two countries experiencing major problems. But by 2004, the numbers in some Asian countries rivaled those in sub-Saharan Africa.

Rao stressed that it's not too late, and that strong national leadership and more funding can turn the epidemic around.

However, he said, "If national responses remain as they are today, we're all in deep trouble."

"We know what to do," he said. "We are just not doing enough of it."

He said prevention programs must be expanded to target groups with spiking infection rates. Out of 16 Asian countries, a study found that only 1 percent of men who have sex with men had been reached with HIV/AIDS messages — and only 5 percent of injecting drug users.

Funding must also be increased to US$5 billion (euro4.14 billion) over the next two years to make a dent in the epidemic, and affordable treatment must be made available to more people, he said.

In India — which has the world's second-highest number of HIV infections after South Africa — only about 5 percent of the 5 million now infected receive treatment.

But in neighboring Sri Lanka, free AIDS drugs are provided to all those infected with the virus, said the country's health minister, Nimal Siripala de Silva.

De Silva said other countries' leaders, including those attending the Group of Eight summit in Scotland next week, should help all of Asia reach that goal. He also aimed a barbed comment at U.S. President George W. Bush.

" President Bush, in search of weapons of mass destruction, engaged in a war with Iraq, but unfortunately could not find any," he said. "In our own societies ... the worst weapon of mass destruction — the spread of the HIV virus — is clearly visible."

An estimated 8.2 million people had the virus in the Asia-Pacific region last year. About 1.2 million were newly infected in 2004, second only to sub-Saharan Africa.

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