HIV/AIDS Treatment

This pandemic has now taken hold of many countries in Asia. There are more than 10 million people got infected HIV in Asia now. In 2003, 0.5 million people died due to this disease in this region and more than one million people were added as newly infected. The highest number of HIV positive now exists in India but the highest percentage of HIV prevalence now exists in Cambodia in Asia region. More than 7.6 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in India and 3% people in Cambodia. About 0.4 million people are found HIV positive in Myanmar.

Asia is facing an exploding HIV/AIDS pandemic. Until the late 1980s, no Asian country had experienced a major AIDS epidemic, but by the late 1990s, the disease was well established across the region. Today, the prevalence of HIV in some countries remains relatively low, but with a population that is roughly 60 percent of the world total, even low prevalence translates into huge numbers infected. At the end of 2006, as many as 4.58 million Indians were living with HIV/AIDS. The country is projected to overtake South Africa as the nation with the largest HIV-infected population in the world. But Thailand is quite deferance, though the AIDS epidemic in here started earliest and prevention efforts have achieved some success, the prevalence of HIV is still around two percent. The “Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation” identified four major approaches in a groundbreaking study on spread out HIV in Asia. This study undertook by comparing of social-economic norm, family pattern, economic dependency, cause of mounting sex industries, gender discrimination status & global analysis fact. There are four factors that appear to play a crucial role in HIV transmission in Asian countries: Injection/ intravenous drug use (By sharing needle), female sex work (Due to lack of safe sex knowledge), gender discrimination (which indirectly force females commercial or non-commercial sex), Same sex/ homosexually/ Hijara (Due to lack of HIV/AIDS information, because they act invisible in this society). Poverty & illiteracy fueled it proportionally.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, has seen a significant increase in HIV infections and serves as an example of how rapidly an HIV epidemic can develop. The country has seen sharp rises in infection rates among injection drug users (90 percent of IDUs in three major cities in Indonesia have been found to use unclean equipment) and sex workers. At the same time, condom use in the country remains very low.

Of course, the prevalence of HIV varies widely between countries and within countries, and vulnerable segments of the population have disproportionately high HIV infection rates. Male and female commercial sex workers (CSWs) and injection drug users (IDUs) were the first groups to be seriously affected by HIV/AIDS in most of Asia and remain critical engines of the epidemic. UNCDP estimates that between 500,000 and 1,00,000 people in Bangladesh are addicted to drugs. Although HIV rates are comparatively lower (one per cent) among the sex workers but Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) rates are still quite high (20 per cent) among this group.

However in Asian region, the epidemic is not contained within these at-risk populations. HIV is spreading rapidly to sex industry clients (including sex tourists) and to the sexual partners of both sex workers and IDUs. Evidence that the virus is reaching general populations can be found in the neonatal clinics of the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, and Nagaland, where more than one percent of pregnant women are HIV positive.

The responses and capacity required to address the identified vulnerabilities in Asia lie within the region itself. Although, capacities, commitment and resources within countries are varied, a diverse range of successful responses exist within Asia. These include examples of early responses that have successfully reduced the impact of the epidemic in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia as well as examples from countries like India and China which have demonstrated the effectiveness of leadership and commitment at the highest level. As a result of continued and concerted advocacy, all national governments in the region have developed national strategic plans — most of which recognize the need for multi-sectoral approaches. However, responses continue to be health focused in the absence of robust technical and human resources that can enable effective conversion of multi-sectoral strategies into action. There are many successful examples of civil society responses, including effective models of PLWHA involvement, but they are largely limited to pilot initiatives which need to be scaled-up and replicated for wider coverage. A critical challenge in the region is to create a sense of urgency among countries at an early stage of the epidemic and to scale up existing responses in countries which have generalized epidemics.

Growing poverty among those who have not benefited from Asia’s inclusion in the global economy is also driving increased injection drug use, and few countries have mounted an effective response to the drug-related HIV epidemic through either peer education or syringe exchange programs. There has been little political will to combat HIV among IDUs in the region as the epidemic has often been falsely perceived to be self-contained in this highly marginalized community. Another important factor to consider, in countries like Cambodia and Myanmar, is that war and prolonged civil unrest have destroyed much of the public health infrastructure and have encouraged increased commercial sex and drug use. Sexual behaviour change is another factor in some region, while “Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation” found, sexual behaviour among Bangladeshi women is changing. Adolescent girls may not remain in the traditional sexual confinement of the previous generations and casual sex among them is on the rise. This may encourage AIDS to acquire alarming proportions in Bangladesh.