Heroin and HIV/AIDS epidemic in Burma

HIV infection rates of Burmese sex workers in Thailand are estimated at 70 percent.

WHO, Unicef and other independent researchers and NGOs have warned that the infection rate in Ranong province in southern Thailand is very high.

Also in Mae Sai, Chiang Rai, and Chiang Mai (northern Thailand), where many sex workers are from Burma, the infection rates are horrifying. Between 25 per cent to 35 per cent of women entering the sex industry in Thailand are Shan immigrants. Between 40-60 per cent of all women working in brothels have HIV, SAIN reported.

Brothels in Chiang Rai, Mae Sot, and Mae Sai are filled with Burmese sex  workers. They are owned by Thais. Their customers are Burmese, including soldiers, and Thais.

Lack of Education

At the beginning of this year Inter Press Service reported that in 1997, after a brief period of appearance in the media, condom advertisements shown on state-run television in Burma were pulled by officials afraid of criticism from conservative circles that insist such advertisements promote promiscuity.

However, concerned editors and physicians in Burma are not sitting idly though they have little power to launch an Aids awareness campaign. Some privately-owned magazines run frequent articles about the disease. There are a handful of foreign NGOs working in Burma, but they have received little cooperation from the junta. The regime is not willing to allow free and open access to information, hospitals, prisons, drug treatment centers, or HIV/AIDS data. NGOs deciding to “bite the bullet” and work with the regime have been frustrated and hampered in their efforts.

Unicef reported that northern Burma’s Shan State is the world’s biggest single source of heroin and that drug users in the country frequently resort to needles shared by multiple users. As heroin No.4 is cheap and available, opium smokers have switched to heroin injection. SAIN and other independent organizations estimated that in 1997 between 400,000 to 600,000 people were carrying HIV.

The Generals Are In Denial

Initially, the junta said that AIDS was only a foreign disease. They said: “That is a disease caused by foreigners or the disease came from neighboring countries.”

Sadly, this senseless understanding needs to be changed and the sullen generals who know how to bully unarmed civilians should learn more about the secret plague that could really devastate the country.

When an international Aids conference was held in Chiang Mai in 1995, a Burmese delegation attended the conference. A Burmese physician, who was recruited by the government to attend the seminar, told a reporter, “Don’t believe what the outside press report about the AIDS situation in our country. There is no such thing.”

Two years later, according to a source in Keng Tung, Shan State, a 200-bed hospital was filled with HIV and Aids patients.

Indeed, the battle with this deadly virus won’t be easy.                                             

This article is contributed by a staff reporter in Thailand.