Thailand - Part of amfAR's Report on AIDS in Asia

March 2008. Thailand has long been recognized as one of the world’s success stories when it comes to fighting back against HIV/AIDS. It was the first country in Southeast Asia to be hit by the epidemic in 1984, and soon after, HIV incidence began to soar among sex workers, gay men, and later, injection drug users (IDUs). The Thai government and NGOs moved aggressively—and with great success—in the early 1990s to control the spread of HIV. The government’s activities focused largely on a public education campaign aimed at encouraging 100 percent condom use, along with efforts to reduce commercial sex. Thailand succeeded in reducing the number of new infections from 143,000 in 1991 to 29,000 in 2001. Although more than one million Thais have become HIV positive and more than 400,000 have died from AIDS in the last 20 years, the World Bank estimated that without the country’s aggressive anti-HIV campaigns, 7.7 million more people would have become infected with the virus. Roughly 580,000 Thais were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2006, according to UNAIDS. An estimated 18,000 Thais were newly infected with HIV in 2005, a 10 percent drop from 2004. Thailand’s campaign to provide antiretroviral medication reached approximately 60 percent of HIV-positive Thais in need of treatment in 2006...

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Contributor: Anuradha Bhattacharjee
Published Date: May 8, 2008