December 1993
East Wind
Page 4
Asia Not Immune to AIDS
Sangum guests say disease is shoved under the rug in
Asian countries like India and Thailand.
By Jesse Tung
AIDS is one of the biggest problems
that the world faces today, but few people in
the United States know that the highest rate
of HIV contraction in the world is in Asian
countries. On October 7, Sangam, the South
Asian student organization, hosted a sympo
sium about AIDS in South Asia to a crowd of
over 100 people in Hamilton Hall. The guest
speakers included Indu Ahluwahlia, a doc
torate candidate in the School of Public
Health at the University; Lakshman
Ramamurthy, a graduate student in the Uni
versity's biology department; and Kari
Hartwig from Family Health International, a
non-profit organization located in Washing
ton, D.C.
“AIDS is a serious problem,’’ said
Amish Sura, ajunior biology major and vice-
president of Sangam. “We thought that eve
ryone should be aware that it’s not isolated in
the West. And what is seen as a modem
problem of the West is present in an alarming
degree in the very traditional cultures of
Asia.’’
Ramamurthy discussed the medical
aspects of the HIV virus and the history of
AIDS both in the United States and in India,
where AIDS became an explosive epidemic
around 1985. He said that no one really
knows the exact rate of HIV contraction in
Asian countries because of the lack of testing
resources and the secrecy that certain coun
tries like China have about revealing the
number of HIV cases. However, Ramamurthy
added that tests run in India and Thailand
have shown that AIDS has clearly become an
epidemic in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
He partly blames this high rate on the con
servative cultures in India.
“It is very difficult for Asian countries,
which are very conservative and so righteous,
to accept AIDS, because AIDS was first
publicized with homosexuals and was consid
ered a taboo disease,’’ Ramamurthy said. He
also referred to a New York Times article
about the recent earthquake in India. Doctors
feared that a lack of sterile needles might
cause victims there to contract theHIV virus.
Ramamurthy said that AIDS is no longer
just a Western problem confined mainly to
the United States. He said, “By the year
2000, the U.S. will only have about 10
percent of all AIDS cases in the world.”
Hartwig discussed the current prob
lems that AIDS Control And Prevention
(AIDSCAP), an organization for the preven
tion of AIDS transmission, faces in South
“AIDS in India was
in a climate where the
Indian government ve
hemently denied it ex
isted until two years
ago.”
-Indu Ahluwahlia, UNC
School of Public Health,
Asia and Southeast Asia and the strategies
that it has implemented to combat these
problems. She said that because of the mas
sive population density in that part of the
world, the spread of AIDS has increased
rapidly, while funding for prevention there
has decreased. By the year 2000, Asia will
overtake Africa in most cases of AIDS.
Hartwig described the AIDS epidemic
in particular Asian countries. This epidemic
is especially prevalent in Thailand.
“A lot of people, when they talk about
AIDS in Southeast Asia, talk about Thailand
because of its large sex industry and IV drug
use,” she said.
Hartwig also discussed the programs
that AIDSCAP has tried to implement in
Tamil Nadu, India. They distributed con
doms, encouraged change in sexual behavior
and began dialogue with the local govern
ment about AIDS prevention. These pro
grams seemed to be woiking, she said, but it
/
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It is very dijficult for Asian
countries, which are very con
servative and so righteous, to
accept AIDS, because AIDS
was firstpublicized with homo
sexuals and was considered a
taboo disease.”
- Lakshman Ramamurthy
was still too early to make any serious con
clusions on these initiatives.
Ahluwahlia discussed the forces affect
ing the AIDS epidemic in India. For many
years, the Indian government failed to admit
that AIDS existed, she said.
“AIDS in India was in a climate where
the Indian government vehemently denied it
existed until two years ago,” Ahluwahlia
said. “In 1988, during the World AIDS
conference, the Indian Administrator of
Health said, ‘We have moral behavior and we
have no HIV problem, but we’re here to see
what the Western world was doing.’”
Ahluwahlia also said only 2 percent of
the entire Indian Health care budget was
allocated for the funding for AIDS research
and prevention. Because third world coun
tries have to control infant mortality as well
as AIDS, prevention was usually on the
bottom of the list for funds. Because sexuality
is shoved “under the rug” in Indian culture,
the issue of AIDS has also not been openly
discussed.
“The symposium made me more aware
of the AIDS epidemic outside the U.S.,” said
Ken Wu, ajunior anthropology major from
Greenville. “The media has had such an
impact on exposing AIDS, mainly in the
U.S., that many people are not aware of the
AIDS situation on a world-wide scale.”
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