World Report

AIDS Continues to Ravage Africa, Thailand

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

RALPH WENGE, CNN ANCHOR: Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic some 15 years ago, the virus has infected more than 47 million people around the world. Half of those are in Africa. Most of its victims are young adults, including a rapidly increasing number of women. But many refuse to admit they have the disease, and that makes it nearly impossible to stop it from spreading.

Canada's CBC traveled to one area of Kenya where the virus and its stigma threaten to wipe out an entire way of life.

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MARTIN SEEMUNGAL, CBC (voice-over): She fights to hold onto what little life is left in her frail body. Emily Otinno (ph) is only 16- years-old. She is dying. But in this ward, the killer has no name. Emily has AIDS.

Reverend Simon Onyunga (ph) has watched AIDS decimate his congregation in Homa Bay, but he is also shocked at the level of denial. Despite the toll people refuse to admit that AIDS exists.

REVEREND SIMON ONYUNGA: If you are to ask her, she will talk about taboo, she'll give you cultural reasons, she'll talk about an opportunistic disease and tell you that is what she is suffering from. And she will not tell you she is perishing because of HIV.

SEEMUNGAL: Even the hospital won't officially admit there are AIDS patients. These are called TB wards, but unofficially doctors will say that virtually everyone here is HIV-positive. Many have already developed full-blown AIDS.

(on camera): Have you been tested?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Me?

SEEMUNGAL: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have not yet.

SEEMUNGAL: Do you think that maybe you have HIV?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't have. I don't have, I'm sure.

SEEMUNGAL: AIDS swept into Kenya years ago, but as with many African countries, governments don't want to talk about it, let alone deal with it. In fact, it was only late last year, just a few months ago, that Kenya's president finally went public and declared AIDS a national disaster.

(voice-over): But Dr. Frederick Omaya (ph) says the damage has been done. Because the government refused to admit there was a problem, precious years have been cost.

DR. FREDERICK OMAYA: This has caused a problem to get out of proportion. And the infection now has gone all over like bush fire.

SEEMUNGAL: Across Kenya, the infection rate is 15 percent. But in places, like here in Homa Bay, it's estimated that 70 percent of adults have HIV.

Homa Bay is a fishing town on the shores of Lake Victoria. When the fishermen come in with a catch, there are scores of women there to meet them, looking to get fish in exchange for sex. The women then sell the fish.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They do this because they need money. They need money.

SEEMUNGAL (on camera): And is there a lot of women coming, doing that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is most of them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And so if every fisherman is going to do that and everyone woman is also going to have boyfriends who are fisherman, the spread goes.

SEEMUNGAL (voice-over): This combination of cultural traditions and denial is threatening the entire continent. The death rate in this town alone has doubled in the last year. And while it has been the center of a thriving fishing industry, AIDS is killing the people who steer the boats. Soon, people fear, there will be nobody left, victims of the same killer without a name that is slowly but surely killing Emily. Doctors have done all they can. Only her god can help her now.

Martin Seemungal, CBC news, Homa Bay, Kenya.

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ASIEH NAMDAR, CNN ANCHOR: While Africa has the highest rate of infection from the AIDS virus, health-care workers in Thailand expect to see a dramatic rise in AIDS deaths this year. The disease is expected to cost the country $9 billion this year. The high price of treatment has prompted the government to put more effort into prevention.

Singapore's Channel NewsAsia travels to Bangkok, and tells us what officials are doing there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ROMEN BOSE, CHANNEL NEWSASIA (voice-over): With over 2 percent of the population infected, Thailand is now second only to Yemen in HIV problem rates. And the World Health Organization estimates over 50 percent of sex workers in the kingdom are infected. That's up to 50 times higher than the estimated rate of infection in the general population.

JORN DABBARANSI, DEP. PRIME MINISTER AND HEALTH MINISTER: The new generations who grow up and could be involved in risky behaviors, that is the highest priority of our prevention program. From now on, the already infected ones, let bygones be bygones. We rather spend our effort, time and resources in protecting and preventing the new ones from entering into this arena. That is our utmost important.

BOSE: To educate the masses on safe sex, the government will recruit 10,000 volunteers in each of 17,000 villages nationwide to spread their knowledge of prevention methods. Thailand has also been praised as one of the countries that provide comprehensive records of HIV cases, a step that world health workers say is useful in management of the AIDS problem.

DR. GILLES POUMEROL, REGIONAL ADVISER, WHO: Countries like Australia, for example, or even Thailand, have a relatively good reporting system, because they have the diagnostic capacity because reporting is well organized. Other countries have very low reporting rates, and in reality the number of cases reported represent only 10 or 20 percent of what is really occurring.

BOSE: Health officials say a lack of information and facilities to test for the virus is especially critical.

JUNSUDA SUWUNJUNDEE, ASIA-PACIFIC NETWORK OF PEOPLE LIVING WITH AIDS (through translator): We need to give women the correct information instead of support groups, because women now only find that they have AIDS only when they go in for their pregnancy.

BOSE: If active steps for prevention are not taken, the World Health Organization estimates fatalities in Asia will grow from just over 130,000 in 1995 to over half a billion by this year.

Roman Bose, Channel NewsAsia, Bangkok.

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