Increase in AIDS Cases in Thailand Prompts Action by Civic Groups
By Ron Corben
Bangkok
14 February 2009

VOA

Scene in a Thailand red light district (file photo)


Thailand's Health Ministry has warned the country faces up to 12,000 people becoming infected with the AIDS virus in 2009, with the most vulnerable being women and homosexual men. Concern comes as a Thai civic group looks to raise awareness among police officers as the group works with male sex workers.

On the streets of Bangkok's red light and entertainment district of Patpong efforts to raise awareness among sex workers are on-going.

Surang Janyam, is director of a civic group, SWING, which works with male sex workers in Bangkok and at the seaside beach resort township of Pattaya. SWING, in its prevention measures, distributes condoms to male sex workers. But Surang says often the sex workers face police harassment. "Many times we saw that sex workers have a problem when they have a condom - that's because that means they are a sex worker and in Thailand the sex worker is illegal and then the sex worker will get arrested from the police," the civic group director said.

Instead, the civic group turned to the police, initially by discussions with local police stations but later through a training and awareness raising program with Thai Police cadets. For three weeks in their final year several cadets work with the group's staff. "The police cadets have to do the same as the SWING staff - they have to go to educate the sex workers who are working on the street who are working in the bar and give the condom and try to make them understand to take care of themselves and save themselves," Surong said.

The cadets then return to the police academy where they report to other class members. Sub Lieutenant Natcharapol Sinviriyanon, says the experience with the civic work has helped him in his future work as a police officer.

He said the message he told his friends in the cadet school; was that everybody is human, even sex workers. He said even if they are selling sex they are human. He said when he becomes a policeman, he will understand more that sex workers are human.

The Thai Health Ministry, in its latest forecast, ranks male and female sex workers among the highest risk groups from contracting the virus that leads to AIDS.

This week the Health Ministry projected as many as 12,000 people will become infected with the AIDS virus in 2009. Currently Thailand has more than 516,000 adults living with HIV/Aids. Thailand's death toll from AIDs is more than 613,000.

Thailand United Nations AIDS Country Coordinator, Patrick Benny, says while the forecast of 12,000 is much lower than the 120,000 new infections Thailand was reporting each year a decade ago, trends do point to a rising incidence within key vulnerable groups. "Those numbers, particularly in most at risk populations in this country - sex workers, both male and female, injecting drug users - there are indications that rates of infections are actually rising on an annual basis, in those particular groups, even though the numbers overall may continue to be moving downward," he said.

Benny says a special concern is the rising numbers of women becoming infected mostly by their male partners bringing the infection home to their female partner.

But he says policy makers recognize more needs to be done through funding from the government and United Nations to improve public education and awareness.

Thailand plans to further reduce the numbers of new victims of AIDS, provide unrestricted access to antiviral drugs and treatment and access to social welfare for over 80 per cent of people living with HIV/Aids and their families.

Thailand's Aids temple offers life lessons in death

[Top: A patient with Aids is seen in the shower area at the Aids hospice on the grounds of the Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu Buddhist temple.]

LOPBURI, Thailand (AFP) - Ice Wepawadi has not told her parents she has Aids, even though she is only days from death at this Buddhist temple hidden away on a Thai hillside.

The emaciated 25-year-old lies in the bed she has occupied for the past month at the Wat Phra Baht Nam Phu temple, a hospice founded 17 years ago by a monk to care for those living with a disease that is still considered taboo in Thailand.

"My family, my dad, my mum - nobody knows I came here. I just told them that I went to work. I don't want to tell them. I feel they cannot take it," Ice told AFP.

"This place is the last place. Everybody knows it's their last but they are strong, they make their own happiness. All the time we laugh, we cannot think too much," she said.

The temple, 50 miles (80 kilometres) from Bangkok, has cared for more than 10,000 people - still a small proportion of the estimated 610,000 people living with HIV in Thailand, according to UN figures.

While providing medical care for patients, the temple's principles are steeped in its Buddhist faith.

"The people living with HIV are a small group who do something wrong in their life and don't have a chance to get better. This is about karma," said temple coordinator Sayamon Unboonruang.

"(People) discriminate and keep them away from society. We need more understanding for each other," she said.

A wing of the hospice housing 33 patients in the final stages of their disease includes Ice, who spends her days listening to her favourite singer, Mariah Carey, surrounded by stuffed toys and pictures of monks.

It is a long way from the life she once led in Pakistan, where she worked as a hotel cook for six years before discovering she had contracted the virus.

Many patients arrive here unannounced and, often, anonymously.

Jo-Jo, who shares a ward with Ice, was nicknamed by staff after arriving without identification, unable to speak and showing signs of mental illness.

He had been living with his grandmother and after she died neighbours brought him to the temple.

Now he wants to die and refuses all medication and food. One bright blue earring, a wooden necklace and the painted red nails are the only hints of his former life.

Near the room he and Ice share is a quarantine ward for patients with tuberculosis, a secondary illness for HIV sufferers.

Yet fear of the disease appears to exist even here - the temple's clinic has no Thai doctor, and just one Indian nurse and a Cambodian doctor care for 120 resident and 300 non-resident patients. The doctor is not permitted to prescribe medicines.

In emergencies patients are sent to a hospital in nearby Lopburi town to receive anti-retroviral drugs that slow the progress of the disease.

"I think they're afraid of HIV, they don't want to work with HIV-positive patients," said the Indian nurse, Ching Thangsing, 26.

"We tried at Lopburi hospital and we talked to the health department and then we do advertisements on web sites. No one applied."

Combating this fear is a key aim of the temple which welcomes school groups to its museums and monuments. Visitors pray at a Buddhist shrine on top of a hill that contains the ashes of 10,000 former residents.

One museum displays the mummified bodies of some late residents, including a five-year-old boy, who contracted HIV from his mother, and a transvestite sex worker with silicone breasts.

Elsewhere, body parts are displayed in tanks of formaldehyde, a reminder that the human body can be put to good use.

The idea behind the gruesome displays is to encourage visitors to avoid activities that could expose them to HIV/Aids. "We cannot deny death," Sayamon said.

"This is a very unique place," said 36-year-old Katsumi Suzuki, a Japanese volunteer, as he talks to patients in a room looking out on a field of sunflowers and corn.

"It crosses the area between Buddhism and medicine. It's not a hospital and I feel it's not the best place for (medical) care, but maybe it's the best place to live peacefully."