HIV-AIDS SPREADS ALONG ASIA'S DRUG ROUTES-REPORT

Increasing drug use in Asia is accelerating the spread of HIV-AIDS along
drug trafficking routes from the so-called Golden Triangle to nations like
Indonesia and governments are doing too little to combat it, a report says.

The report on 22 Asian countries said Asian governments were working
against the sexual transmission of HIV but they were not doing enough to
prevent the virus spreading among injecting drug users.

"Without such action, Asia will continue to be home to what threatens to be
amongst the worst regional AIDS epidemics on Earth," said the report by The
Centre For Harm Reduction, one of Asia's foremost health and medical
research bodies.

Seven million people in Asia live with AIDS or HIV (human immunodeficiency
virus), which causes the disease.

The report said Asia had few HIV-AIDS prevention programmes for drug users,
such as needle exchanges, and that many drug users shared needles cleaned
simply by cold water, not the recommended boiling water or bleach.

"Drug use has become one of the major accelerants of the HIV epidemic in
the Asian region," said the report available at the centre's Web site,
"Populations of drug users develop rapidly along trafficking routes,
creating new drug markets and HIV threat in host countries," it said.

Indonesia At Risk

The report said Indonesia was one of the most at risk with HIV infection
due to drug injections rising to 19 percent of the total number of people
infected from less than one percent before 2000.

It said by September 2001, there were 2,313 cases of HIV in Indonesia, of
which 449 were injecting drug users, adding there were some two million
drug users, half of which injected.

The Australian report found 75 percent of those infected with HIV in Iran
were injecting drug users, 65 percent in Vietnam and 54 percent in Thailand.

The report noted an increasing number of Asian women injecting drugs,
particularly in the sex industry.

"In some parts of Asia, an increasing crossover is being observed between
injecting drug use and commercial sex work, with all the implications this
has for further rapid spread of HIV infection from injecting drug users,"
it said.

The report was critical of Asian governments increased incarceration of
drug users, which it said increases the risk of transmitting HIV.

"In many countries in the region, incarceration of drug users ...not only
continues but it is being increased," it said.

"This is despite the fact that there is mounting evidence from the Asian
region...that incarceration not only does not help drug dependent people
cease drug use but hugely increases risk for HIV transmission among and
from these populations."