India, Indonesia and Pakistan have become key fronts in Asia's fight against HIV/AIDS, health experts said ahead of the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific next week.
Delegates from 65 countries will gather on the Indonesian resort island of Bali from Sunday to Thursday to discuss strategy and "renew our commitment to fight the disease," congress chairman Zubairi Djoerban said.
Two of the main talking points are expected to be how to reach the 75 percent of sufferers who are not receiving treatment, and how to stop the disease spreading among intravenous drug users.
But Djoerban said that, without a matching commitment from governments to tackle the disease that killed 380,000 people across Asia in 2007, the conference would achieve little.
"We can discuss prevention and treatment but with no leadership and commitment from countries and the community, we won't achieve much," he said.
An estimated five million Asians are living with HIV, especially in southeastern countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia, according to a UN report released last year.
While there are some bright spots, such as Cambodia, where HIV prevalence has declined through condom use, new infections are growing steadily in populous countries such as Bangladesh and China, the report added.
In Indonesia and South Asia, Djoerban said the biggest threat was the lethal combination of dirty needles and unprotected sex.
"We're concerned about India, Indonesia and Pakistan, where there is overlapping of drug injecting and unprotected sex... this includes sex workers taking drugs and drug users not using condoms," he said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment