Adding to the AIDS crisis is Burma's unelected military regime, which sees the disease as a "failure of national security" and worrisome proof that its domination and xenophobia is still not strong enough to keep out foreign influences, the UN document added. The lengthy internal document is expected to be released soon by the United Nations Country Theme Group on HIV-AIDS. It deals with Burma's battle against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and suggests ways the UN, foreign governments and other international agencies can save Burmese from AIDS-related deaths. "High rates of casualties are guaranteed, regardless of how well the medical sector might be prepared to handle them," it said. "There is worse to come. Both the numbers, and the rates of HIV infection, are increasing." The document also warned that prostitutes in Burma are spreading HIV to hundreds of thousands of customers, who in turn unknowingly infect countless others. For example, infected workers at Burma's fabled jade mines will continue to pass the virus on to more partners through to the year 2006. Burma, also known as Myanmar, is the biggest nation in mainland Southeast Asia but one of the 10 poorest countries on earth. Current US-led sanctions against new investment, and other anti-Burma boycotts, are designed to force the regime to improve human rights and allow democracy. These cuts in foreign financial assistance and other international action against Burma have helped to diplomatically and commercially isolate the country, but have also devastated Burma's ability to tackle AIDS, according to the document. "The politicizing of humanitarian assistance to Myanmar, combined with the reluctance to class 'HIV-AIDS Care and Prevention' as humanitarian assistance, has created a donor vacuum which is leading to serious human suffering," the document said. "The epidemic is spreading almost unimpeded." Asked in an interview if US-led sanctions are hampering anti-AIDS efforts, one UN official based in Burma replied: "Of course. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) can't be here. There are not many donors here. It's a humanitarian crisis here." The UN official added, "For the United States looking at Burma, HIV-AIDS doesn't qualify for exemption to the boycott, because it is not seen as a humanitarian issue. "Burma is cut off from everything, including HIV-AIDS assistance. That's why we are trying to change the US position." Burma's regime has some anti-AIDS programs, mostly in medical institutions, but lacks an efficient, overall approach to the problem. Some US-based non-government organizations are able to deal with AIDS on a limited basis in Burma, including CARE, Save the Children and World Vision. The World Health Organization and several other UN groups are also based in Burma and grappling with AIDS. The US-led war on drugs, in which Washington pressures Burma's regime to suppress narcotics, also indirectly fuels the spread of AIDS. Much of the world's illegal opium and its derivative, heroin, come from Burma. The UN's latest survey in Burma showed "infection rates among Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) were the highest in the world," the document said. "Many of the users interviewed told of smoking heroin on an occasional basis and finding the need to shift to injection, only as suppression activities drove up prices, and the fear of detection, each pushed the user towards injection. "This is because smoked heroin can be smelled, while injecting behavior can be more easily hidden. "Similar evidence from other countries suggests that suppression of what are called 'soft drugs', such as marijuana, push risk-seeking youth towards more dangerous alternatives," the UN document added. As a result, Burmese who put down their handmade, "chasing the dragon" heroin-smoking pipes and instead picked up syringes to shoot heroin, fell victim to needle-spread HIV. In northern Burma, bordering southern China's Yunnan province, when 209 jailed Burmese junkies were tested, 201 were found HIV positive -- a shocking 96 percent rate, the document said. More HIV tests, at other drug addiction clinics in Burma, confirmed extremely high rates were relatively common. Kachin State's Drug Dependence Treatment Units showed a 90 percent HIV rate. In Mandalay, Burma's second biggest city, HIV rates at the clinics hit 84 percent. Inmates at addiction clinics in Rangoon, the capital, averaged 65 percent HIV positive, an improvement over other regions thanks to better anti-AIDS efforts. The virus has infected more than 440,000 people in Burma, or about 1.8 percent of the population, the document said. The fastest route is via prostitution and other heterosexual coupling. A mere 25 HIV-positive prostitutes can rapidly spread the virus to spiraling numbers of unprotected clients. "Assuming 500 customers per year, these 25 women would have had some 100,000 sexual partners since they first became infected." The document cited the jade mining town of Hpakant, in Kachin state, where "labor is hard, and all the vices are present, including gambling, alcohol, narcotics and commercial sex. "With an average lag, or lead time, of eight years from time of infection until appearance of AIDS-related symptoms, a migrant worker who became infected during one season's work in, for example, the jade mines of Hpakant in 1998, may infect any number of other sexual or injecting partners through the year 2006 without ever being aware of his or her infectiousness. "Other areas of significance include shipping ports, trucking and transport hubs, large timber operations, and large-scale infrastructure projects" where the spread of HIV is out of control. "Condom use rates in Myanmar are very low, and quality condoms are not widely available, or are over-priced." As a result, the document claims, Burma needs an immediate "90 million condoms" distributed inexpensively, or for free, just to cover the next one year. The AIDS problem is worsened by the military regime's perception that the virus symbolizes a victorious foreign invasion against Burmese morality, and thus reveals the government's failure to defend the country. As a result, the embarrassed, unpopular regime nervously plays down any mention of AIDS, or links it to "foreign cultures." In a rare public mention of the disease, Health Minister Major-General Ket Sein recently told an audience, "The best way to control AIDS is to control yourself, as there is no medicine to cure or control the disease. "For students to refrain from high risk behaviors, and resist adoption of foreign cultures, appropriate levels of health education school be provided according to the standard of the children," the health minister added. According to the UN document, "The fact that HIV-AIDS has spread into remote human communities in all corners of the globe has been insignificant to Myanmar authority figures who suspect they will somehow be blamed or criticized for its intrusion into Myanmar. "Any visible 'negative or foreign' influence may be interpreted as a failure of national security, in a broad sense, and failure of leadership in a more narrow sense. "This becomes especially sensitive when the alleged 'failure' is coded as a moral one, as in the case of the HIV-AIDS epidemic. "HIV-AIDS is a sensitive subject in Myanmar. It is too often associated only with illicit or illegal sexual and drug-related behaviors, to the exclusion of other routes of transmission. "This has led to HIV becoming understood or coded as 'the virus of immorality,' and the notion that HIV-AIDS is a marker of illicit or foreign influence retains credibility in Myanmar. "This has created a paralyzing policy ambivalence."
Richard S. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the co-author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" -- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.
from The Laissez Faire City Times
Jump to Forum
AIDS Sweeps Through Burma
by Richard S. Ehrlich
The Role of the War on Drugs
The Military Regime Supresses Mention of the Problem
His web page is located at http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent and he may be reached by email: animists *at* yahoo dot com
Vol 2, No 29, August 1998
Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich