With an estimated 10 million Asians infected by AIDS by 2010, experts said that governments in the Asia-Pacific region should start stepping up their information campaigns on prevention of AIDS.

During the launch of an online AIDS database (www.aidsdatahub.org) in Manila, experts said that while the prevalence of AIDS in Asia-Pacific is still low compared to sub-Saharan Africa, governments in the region should not be complacent and should start addressing the epidemic.

Amala Reddy, regional program advisor for strategic information of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said that by 2010 there will be around 10 million cumulative cases of AIDS in the region.  She added that infections per year may reach 500,000.

“We do not expect infection levels to reach as high as Africa,” Reddy told reporters.

A March 2008 report of the Commission on AIDS in Asia showed that AIDS epidemic in the region is driven by the cases of unprotected paid sex, sharing of contaminated needles and syringes among injecting drug users and unprotected sex between men.

HIV’s continuous transmission, the report said, will continue to be a threat to the region with an estimated 75 million Asian men buying sex regularly from 10 million Asian females who sell sex.

The report also said that growing prevalence of male-to-male sex and drug injection add another 20 million or more to men at high risk of HIV infection.

'Know our epidemics'

Anupama Rao Singh, United Nations Children’s Fund regional director for East Asia-Pacific, said that a major step in the campaign to contain the spread of the epidemic is dissemination of information.

One of the main problems in tracking the epidemic, she said, is the lack of updated HIV prevalence data of some countries in the region.

“National programs in many countries have outdated data on HIV prevalence when effective public health requires that we run faster than the virus,” Singh said.

“We cannot continue to count on historical information and outdated knowledge of our epidemics to contain HIV transmission,” Singh added.

Children and young people, Singh said, should also be informed at the right age about epidemics, including AIDS.

“It’s extremely important that healthy and safe behavior is something that is included in the curriculum,” Singh told abs-cbNews.com/Newsbreak.

Women, children, migrant workers

Singh said that while study showed that in the region, 3 out of 4 adults living with HIV are men, the proportion of women is also rising.

“Asian women, generally categorized as low-risk currently represent less than 25% of all HIV infections but this proportion is projected to increase to 30% by 2015, mostly through their husbands and sexual players” Singh said adding that more infected women would result in more infected newborns.

Singh also expressed concern on the possible effects of migration in the spread of the epidemic.

“We do not really know what is happening to the migrants. If you look at the Asia-Pacific, the number of people who move for jobs is in hundreds of millions,” Singh said.

Preventive measures needed

Reddy told abs-cbnNews.com/Newsbreak that many governments in the region, particularly those have low prevalence of HIV, only start to act when they see an increasing trend in its prevalence.

“Many governments are not yet doing anything about the AIDS epidemic,” Reddy said.

Government, she added, should focus on implementing preventive measures to contain the transmission of HIV. Reddy said Thailand has one of the better campaigns against AIDS. She added that the Thai government implemented crackdowns on brothels and has information campaigns on television.

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