Asia is facing a new wave of the HIV/AIDS epidemic due to harsh criminal penalties for drug use, sex work and consensual sex between men in many parts of the region, health experts say.
At the same time, the global economic downturn is threatening worldwide budget cuts to HIV/AIDS programs, with the risk that life-saving anti retroviral drugs could be withdrawn from patients.
“We are keeping sick people jailed, some literally in cages, when we have good drug dependant treatment programs available,” the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the right to Health, Anand Grover, told an international conference in Hanoi.
“We are seeing a trend globally towards criminalization even though we have overwhelming scientific evidence showing that treatment and prevention works effectively when people’s rights are respected, and when drug addiction, for example, is treated as an illness not a crime.”
While HIV/AIDS infection rates have stabilized across Africa, new infections have jumped 20 % in East Asia alone since 2001. In South-East Asia, infections are increasing most rapidly in Vietnam and Indonesia, especially among intravenous drug users.
The countries that have most successfully controlled HIV/AIDS are those that have adopted a harm reduction approach. In Asia, however, criminal penalties and the associated social stigma reduce infected people’s access to treatment, threatening transmission into the general community.
Recent comments by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, the head of UNAIDS, Dr Michel Sidibé, the new Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Ms Helen Clark, as well as US President, Barak Obama, suggest a new era of harm reduction and decriminalization in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
“Their willingness to pursue a human rights-based approach towards HIV/AIDS control is heartening at a time when it is more urgent than ever before to prevent further transmission of the virus,” the Hon Michael Kirby, former Justice of the High Court of Australia, told the conference.
HIV imposes an additional US$2 billion in costs every year on affected households across Asia. UNAIDS projects HIV will slow the rate of poverty reduction by 60% in Cambodia, 38% in Thailand and 23% in India, between 2003 and 2015. Despite the rapid scale up of treatment, only 31% of patients needing anti-retroviral treatment have been reached worldwide and only 25% across Asia.
The effects of the epidemic are being exacerbated by other challenges to health in Asia, such as influenza pandemics, climate change and globalization.
The International Conference on International Conference on Realising the Rights to Health and Development for All, held in Hanoi from October 26 to 29, brings together 250 health and human rights experts to develop new strategies to combat these public health threats.
“Successful HIV programs exemplify the effectiveness of human rights interventions in health. But, access to treatment is also a big issue for many other major diseases, such as TB and malaria. The rights-based approach is something we have to promote for HIV and beyond HIV,” Mr Grover said.