AIDS VICTIMS SHUNNED

DONMUANG, Thailand -- Aumporn Thongbeang, 24, and her baby girl,
Nondern, sit on a mat outside their room and wait for death to catch
up with them.

Both are part of a growing group that neither chose to
join.

They are young, they live in a developing country and they are dying
of AIDS.

A new report by UNAIDS, the United Nations agency set up to combat the
spread of the deadly virus, says that more than 95 percent of all
HIV-infected people live in

the developing world, in countries like Thailand.

"The epidemic has not been overcome anywhere. Virtually every country
in the world has seen new infections in 1998, and the epidemic is
frankly out of control in many places," UNAIDS said in its annual
update of the epidemic.

Carol Bellamy, the executive director of the United Nations Children's
Fund, likened the epidemic to a plague that is systematically
devastating entire societies.

"Those numbers are framed by one terrible, inescapable fact--that it
is young people up to the age of 24 who are bearing the brunt of the
casualties," she said Tuesday.

Nearly 6 million new AIDS cases were reported this year, with the
developing world the epicenter of the epidemic. More than 22 million
people in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to have the virus, 6.7
million people in South and Southeast Asia and 1.4 million people in
Latin America.

Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said the 6 million new
cases and 2.5 million deaths this year represent a collective failure
because more is known about prevention and protection than ever before.

War, famine, political turmoil, lack of medical facilities, shame and
secrecy have fueled the epidemic in many poor countries, where the
disease is invisible and many people do not even realize they are infected.

That was the case with Aumporn, who says she did not know she was
infected until a routine pregnancy test.

"Once the baby was born, people in our area found out I was sick and
everyone asked me to leave," she said. "They said they were afraid
their own children would catch it."

The young mother looks down at her gurgling baby. "I was lucky," she
said. "I was taken in by this place where people understand and are
not afraid."

She was seated on her mat at a wing of the shelter for battered women
near this airport town. The shelter is run by Buddhist nun Kanittha
Vichieancharoen, 74, one of Thailand's best-known social workers.

She attributes the AIDS epidemic in Thailand to the country's thriving
sex industry, a growing problem with drug abuse and the Thai
government's unwillingness to confront the problem, for fear of
damaging the tourism industry.

Her shelter cares for 19 HIV-positive patients at any time. It is
nearly always full.

Kanittha, who had three sons and eight grandchildren before she became
a nun a few years ago, said she believes the AIDS scare has lost its
deterrent effect over the years in a country where, health officials
estimate, 8 million Thai men visit a prostitute every week.

"We've become used to AIDS because someone is dying here every day.
Every hospital now accepts AIDS patients. They didn't before,"
Kanittha said. "In the first five years everybody was afraid. Today no
one is afraid, and Thai men keep going to prostitutes as before.

"In the beginning the government counted the dead, then it stopped
counting. I have stopped counting too. All I know is that about 10 of
our people have passed away in the last two years."

Fledgling government prevention programs and facilities such as
Kanittha's care for victims and try to educate those not yet infected.

But it is an uphill struggle, because even admitting that one is
infected runs counter to cultural norms. Victims are shunned,
sometimes driven out of their homes and generally treated as outcasts.

Even after their deaths, Aumporn and Nondern will, in all probability,
not be counted as AIDS statistics. A bicycle hearse will take their
bodies to Wat Paiktheo temple, where, for just 50 cents, both will be
cremated in the Buddhist monastery's furnace.

No autopsies are performed. The relatives or friends who pay for the
cremations do not want to be stigmatized or shunned. The monks may
know the cause of death but are sworn to silence by their vows.

After Aumporn's family asked her and her daughter to leave, they, like
thousands of other abandoned women and children, wandered the streets
to find a refuge, a hospice or a monastery willing to take them.
Aumporn is a sturdy young woman with dark, sad eyes who shows no sign
of her affliction. The baby is strong and lively.

No one knows how many more like her are moving through Thai society.
AIDS records are kept in a haphazard manner, and health statistics are
unreliable.

A study financed by the European Union found that 222,000 people have
died of AIDS in Thailand since 1985--nine times more than the Thai
government had recorded.

The same study estimated that 270,000 people carry the AIDS virus,
three times the figure provided by Thai health authorities. Some
speculate that officials may be doctoring the statistics, afraid that
more AIDS cases will mean fewer tourists.

In northern Chiang Rai province, which provides the bulk of Thailand's
sex workers, AIDS was responsible for 80 percent of fatalities in the
25-29 age group, the study found.

Nearly half the deaths nationwide in the same age group can be
attributed to AIDS. One in four young people between 20 and 24 has
died of AIDS.

Alessio Panza, co-author of the study at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn
University, says the increased use of intravenous drugs, as much as
the sex trade, accounts for the spread of AIDS. The drug problem is
rampant in the Chiang Rai-Chiang Mai area, part of the infamous Golden
Triangle at the intersection of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, where hill
tribes and feudal lords with private armies grow the poppies from
which heroin is refined.

"Very often the drug barons hook the young people on heroin so they
can use them as drug traders, middlemen and couriers. In return, the
youngsters get their drugs free. Entire villages are involved in this
dirty business," Panza said.

In Thai villages, Kanittha said, people are looking after the sick
young ones, many of them grandchildren sent to urban centers to make
money. They came back infected with the virus.

"But they still keep pushing their daughters into the sex industry in
the city," Kanittha said. "They want the money."

Checked-by: Patrick Henry