AIDS in Asia : the gathering storm

Abstract

Asia, with more than half of the world's population, is in the early phases of an explosive HIV/AIDS epidemic. While AIDS became a significant factor in the Western Hemisphere and in Africa in the early 1980s, the disease received little attention in most of Asia before the early 1990s. Today the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are more than 1.5 million HIV infections in Asia, yet rarely have more than a handful of AIDS cases been reported in most Asian countries. Although Asia has only 10 percent of the total 15 million HIV infections estimated for the world as a whole, WHO projects that by the turn of the century, more new HIV infections will occur in Asia than in all the rest of the world combined. If the spread of HIV began so late in Asia, how does the Asian AIDS epidemic threaten to become worse than the epidemics seen in other parts of the world? The answer lies in the nature of the Asian epidemic and in the region's huge population. For a number of reasons the epidemic is following a pattern very different from those seen in the United States, Europe, and Africa.