Thailand's 'condom King' Girds For New Battle Against Aids

[LaoPo]

Thailand's 'Condom King' girds for new battle against AIDS

One of Thailands' Greatest Men

Mechai Viravaidya holds a teddy bear made from condoms

BANGKOK (AFP) - On closer inspection, it becomes clear the portrait is not that of the comic book superstar after all but a real-life Thai hero -- "The Real Mr Condom," a character Mechai invented as part of his fabulously successful campaign to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS among his countrymen.

Unlikely as it may sound, this picture of the man whose name has become synonymous with "condom" in Thailand, is among the more subtle of the displays filling Mechai's restaurant and its tropical garden courtyard tucked down a lane in the bustling capital.

The restaurant is called Cabbages and Condoms, and was opened to raise money for AIDS prevention projects. It's named after Mechai's belief that condoms should be as easily available -- and as easy to discuss -- as cabbages, a staple in Thai kitchens and cuisine.

The restaurant's courtyard is filled with trees draped in fairy lights and a small waterfall, and sometimes a musician plays the traditional Thai xylophone known as a ranad.

But look closely at the bouquets of flowers and the petals are made of condoms, as are the lampshades. Mannequins nearby are dressed in clothes made out of packets of condoms and birth control pills.

And as Mechai sits down to talk, his staff produce a stuffed teddy bear and a cat, both made of snipped condoms instead of plush.

These are just some of the ways that Mechai has dreamed up over the last three decades of using humour -- and unlikely condom creations -- to erase the stigma surrounding talk of sex in Thailand.

His efforts have been so successful that his name has become slang for "condom" in Thai -- it was intended as an insult the first time a newspaper called a condom a "mechai," but he wears it as a badge of pride.

Mechai's campaigns are widely credited first with reining in Thailand's population growth in the 1970s, and then with preventing HIV from stampeding across the country in the 1990s.

"It was praised as the best programme in the world," Mechai says of his AIDS prevention campaign. "Everyone was involved, every ministry -- education was involved, business was involved, religion was involved, everyone."

But a decade after life-prolonging drugs first appeared and transformed perceptions of AIDS, Mechai says Thailand's prevention efforts have been waning, leading to fears that infections could rise, especially among the young.

"You've heard the saying, winning the battle and losing the war. Now this may happen in Thailand," he says.

"We have seen a 90 percent decline in infections. Terrific. It's just that now it's beginning to turn up again. Over the last three years, public education in Thailand by the Ministry for Public Health has almost been zilch.

"Younger generations are now saying, is AIDS still around? We thought it was gone. That's why we're not using condoms anymore. It's entirely tragic. We've done it, and now we just let it fall, fall back," he says.

"It's not a matter of not knowing what to do. We know what to do. We've done it. We've achieved great success, now it's falling backwards, and it's just unbelievable."

And that's why, more than a decade after Mechai was Thailand's public health minister, he's been called back to duty as the government's "AIDS czar" to devise a new prevention campaign, focussing specifically on young people who missed out on the original message about safe sex.

Thailand stands out as one of the few bright spots in the world's battle against HIV, although it remains one of the hardest-hit countries in Asia.

Some 1.4 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS. Since the first case was detected here in 1984, more than one million Thais have been infected and more than 400,000 have died.

But the World Bank estimated in a report last year that if Thailand had not pursued such an effective prevention campaign since the 1990s, 7.7 million more people would have been infected.

The United Nations calls Thailand an "early achiever" in meeting its Millennium Development Goal of halting and beginning to reverse the spread of the epidemic by 2015.

In 1990, Thailand had 143,000 new infections, but UNAIDS says the number now is about one-tenth of that.

Much of the credit for that turnaround lies with Mechai, who used the force of his dynamic personality to change both government policy and public perceptions.

He was born in Bangkok in 1941, the son of a Scottish mother and a Thai father, both doctors who instilled in him the importance of public service.

As a young development economist working for Thailand's government, Mechai became famous while moonlighting as a television actor starring in soap operas adapted from popular novels.

He also had a successful radio show and a newspaper column, experiences that helped him learn how to use media to get out a message.

He left government service after just a few years to stage an unsuccessful bid for parliament, and then went on to form his own NGO, which is now the Population and Community Development Association.

When he first started promoting birth control in the 1970s, most of the educational materials were staid brochures that avoided referring directly to either condoms or sex.

But when Mechai started talking about sex, he used his star power to draw in crowds, and then used his humour and stage skills to pull in listeners in a way that no one had done before.

Mechai passed out condoms to everyone he saw, and then encouraged people to blow them into balloons.

"The availability or possession of a product doesn't govern one's behaviour. We have knives in our kitchens, but we are not all killers. The condom is really clean if your mind isn't dirty," he said during one of his early workshops, according to a biography of him called "From Condoms to Cabbages".

Mechai glued condoms to business cards and put them on key chains. He set up family planning "supermarkets" at bus stations to sell contraceptives as well as more novel items, such as lace panties carrying the motto "Too many children make you poor."

He enlisted traffic cops to pass out condoms on New Year's Eve, in a scheme that became known as "Cops and Rubbers".

At his request, Buddhist monks blessed batches of condoms. In rural areas with limited access to media, he hired farmers to spray-paint condom ads on their cows.

When AIDS began threatening Thailand in the 1980s, the government was initially afraid of publicly battling the disease, in part for fear of scaring off visitors and threatening the vital tourism industry.

At the time, the government actively promoted Thailand's famed red light districts, and authorities feared sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS would put off tourists.

Mechai argued that tourists would want the reassurance of knowing that Thailand was tackling the disease head on. In 1991, he was asked to join the prime minister's cabinet, where he made his campaign part of national policy.

He used equally dramatic but simple stunts to ease the social stigma surrounding HIV. Once he called a press conference merely to be photographed drinking from the same glass as someone with AIDS, to make the point that the disease cannot be spread through simple social contact.

While prevention efforts grew steadily throughout the 1990s, the government's focus changed as new drugs became available to treat the disease.

Thailand's treatment programme has been hailed by the World Bank as an international model, providing drugs to 90 percent of the people who need them and resulting in a dramatic drop in the number of AIDS deaths.

Between January and November 2004, nearly 6,600 people died from AIDS. During the same period of 2005, the number of deaths dropped below 1,500.

In recent months, Thailand has also proved willing to battle Western pharmaceuticals manufacturers to extract lower prices by invoking little-used rules under the World Trade Organisation to make its own generics.

The tactic succeeded in winning concessions from the drug companies to cut their own prices.

Even though the overall picture is encouraging, what worries campaigners like Mechai is changing behaviour among Thai youth who missed out on the campaigns of the 1990s.

In recent years, army conscripts -- mostly 21-year-old men who are drafted for mandatory military service -- have shown a growing tendency to visit prostitutes while becoming less likely to use condoms.

The shift is worrying because the behaviour of the conscripts is believed to mirror that of young men generally.

HIV remains alarmingly common among Thai sex workers, creating a threat that the epidemic could push its way back into the general population.

The Ministry of Public Health acknowledges that prevention efforts have slacked off.

"In the last three years, the government let each ministry set up its own budget for AIDS prevention, but it was a very low priority," health minister Mongkol Na Songkhla says.

The budget for prevention was 50 million baht in 2004, but dropped to 20 million baht (570,000 dollars) in 2006.

Mechai's appointment in early April as the new AIDS czar seems to indicate a new commitment to prevention.

"The government has obviously realised that we've got to do something," he said. "If we go the way we've been doing things, we're going to be clobbered."

And his formula for turning things around is simple: condoms, condoms, condoms.

Mechai says abstinence campaigns like those championed by US President George W. Bush's administration just don't work.

"We're not trying to prevent sex, like Bush. No one's been able to do that in the history of the world," he says.

©AFP

http://news.sawf.org/Lifestyle/36745.aspx

LaoPo

Edited May 7, 2007 by LaoPo

[Trevor]

Drugs are not the answer. "AIDS/HIV" needs to be addressed simply by what goes into our mouths, or (preferably not) injected into our bodies.

http://vaccinedangers.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/

[LaoPo]

Drugs are not the answer. "AIDS/HIV" needs to be addressed simply by what goes into our mouths, or (preferably not) injected into our bodies.

http://vaccinedangers.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/

I'm afraid we're going off topic here when we start discussing "taking drugs or not" since it has nothing to do with the campaign of Khun Mechai Viravaidya, which is: USE CONDOMS in order to promote SAFE SEX.

When people, and especially young people, are aware of the dangers of having unsafe sex, there will be less aids and other sexually transmitted diseases.

But reading the article I think it's also quite controversial, especially when one single person says:

“I have known so many people who have died of AIDS and all of them – all of them – took the drugs they were told to by their doctors .. I have never taken any of them and I haven’t got sick. Not even a cold. The doctors told me I had five years left to live .. everyone I know who has been HIV positive – and that’s a lot of people – has died after taking those drugs.”

Goldie Glitters - 30 years “HIV positive”. "

I think it's dangerous to say it's better to take no drugs at all, since it's a kind of free passport for youngsters to have UNSAFE SEX....

Personally, I think there are many people who are takings drugs -against AIDS/HIV Positive- and did NOT die.

But I'm not an expert.

LaoPo

[Ijustwannateach]

Education is certainly the key. But elements of the government don't even want to admit sex exists, so it's going to be a little bit hard.

"Steven"

[LaoPo]

Education is certainly the key. But elements of the government don't even want to admit sex exists, so it's going to be a little bit hard.

"Steven"

I agree, but it's a positive thing that:

" And that's why, more than a decade after Mechai (Viravaidya - LP) was Thailand's public health minister, he's been called back to duty as the government's "AIDS czar" to devise a new prevention campaign, focussing specifically on young people who missed out on the original message about safe sex. "

Better to start 'somewhere' than leave it completely alone.

This man is a Giant in Thailand...a positive Giant in the educational field of 'bringing' Safe Sex to the youngsters.

LaoPo