Aids In Eissan

Thanks for asking so politely.

My personal source for this information is a man that has worked in a Thai AIDs hospice for the last ten years. Needless to say i can't "google" what this man has told me and don't have the time to trawl through the internet. But this may whet your appitite. Source: Agence France-Presse.

Thailand-AIDS: Rate of HIV infection grows among Thai teenagers

Agence France-Presse - January 2, 2003

BANGKOK, Jan 2 (AFP) - The rate of HIV infection among Thai teenagers has jumped from 11 to 17 percent over the past year, Thailand's health ministry said Thursday as it vowed to make condoms more freely available to the young.

"Teenagers form a high risk group, with less than 50 percent of them using condoms, so we need to promote them as a way of preventing sexual disease," the ministry's Communicable Disease Control Department director general Charan Truenwudhipong said in a statement.

"The rate of increase has been higher over the past year, jumping from 11 to 17 percent."

Charan said the department would buy 26 million condoms worth 23 million baht (534,883 dollars) to distribute at health offices across the country this year in a bid to promote their usage.

More vending machines would also be installed in public places to boost the availability of condoms, he added.

Thailand's National Aids Prevention and Control Commission however reportedly complained this week about authorities removing such machines, or refusing to install them as they feared they promoted promiscuity.

According to United Nations figures for 2001, 1.3 to 2.0 percent of Thai females aged 15 to 24 are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, while 0.9 to 1.3 percent of males in the same group are infected.

The growth rate of HIV infection among pregnant women, meanwhile, had dropped by 0.1 percent to 1.2 percent, health minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said.

"The rate is very low. We can say that it is in the lowest group in the world and I am confident that the rate will be lower this year," she said.

One million Thais are believed to have been infected with HIV-AIDS, and a third of them have already died.