By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 4 2003 (IPS)

Countries across Asia and the Pacific may soon be staring at a drastic cut in their labour force – and see their economies undermined – if their leaders fail to take action to stall the deadly march of HIV/AIDS, a senior U.N. official here.

This dire prediction by Kim Hak-Su, executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), comes at a time when the region is still to witness the commitment displayed by Thailand to confront the killer disease.

”Inertia and inaction on HIV/AIDS when we can prevent death is a crime against humanity. We must act now to increase resources for targeted interventions – protect 620 million young people in the region,” Kim said in a statement released Thursday at the end of ESCAP’s annual session for government leaders held here.

”If we don’t act now, HIV/AIDS will become a social and developmental issue,” he told a press conference earlier in the day. ”Our accumulated economic growth will be wiped out.”

The impact the pandemic will have on the region’s labour force was one among many concerns Kim and other officials reiterated during this week’s meeting, which began Sep.1.

Earlier, Festus Mogae, president of Botswana, told a group of journalists on the sidelines of the meeting that Asian countries should avoid the mistake made by African countries in ”starting very late” to mount a determined response to HIV/AIDS.

”It is very important to mount serious projects now, when the prevalence rates are low,” said Mogae.

”It has to be seen more than a health problem, which was one of our mistakes,” added Mogae, whose country has over one-third of its population living with HIV/AIDS. ”Only a comprehensive approach will generate success.”

Indeed, ESCAP’s Kim warned that continuing to neglect the HIV/AIDS problem will result in Asia-Pacific countries experiencing a ”double squeezing” of the labour force.

If this happens, the region, home to some of the world’s most robust economies, would witness a drop in its working population due, first, to a steady rise in its ageing citizens, and second, to the fact that people in the most productive age brackets are the most vulnerable group HIV/AIDS.

The number of people over 65 years is currently six percent of the region’s population, but that number is due to reach 10 percent in 20 years time, states a U.N. study.

Meanwhile, the region’s youngest citizens are among the most vulnerable to the pandemic as HIV/AIDS enters its third decade, notes a report by ESCAP, ‘Economic and Social Progress in Jeopardy: HIV/AIDS in the Asian and Pacific Region’.

”With over half of all new HIV infections occurring among people aged between 15 and 24 years, the Asian and Pacific region’s 620 million young people are at great risk,” states the report, released this week at the U.N. body’s ministerial meeting.

”Especially vulnerable are young people in sex work, young IDUs (intravenous drug users), sexually abused youth, young combatants, young civilians caught up in armed conflict, street youth and orphaned youth,” it reveals.

”Millions are already affected by the epidemic. Yet vast number of young people remain unaware or ignorant concerning HIV/AIDS,” it adds. ”The information and services that could prevent infection are often not available to, or accessible by, young people, and national strategies reflect scant regard for young people’s needs and realities.”

Consequently, ESCAP is urging government leaders up to the levels of prime ministers and presidents to take a cue from what Thailand has achieved in its struggle against the killer disease.

Currently, this South-east Asian country, which was among the first hit by HIV/AIDS in the region in the early 1980s, has an estimated 700,000 people living with the virus, according to a U.N. study.

But experts have also calculated that the number could have been dramatically higher by now – an estimated four million people with HIV/AIDS – had the Thai government in the early 1990s ignored the pandemic, according to the ESCAP report.

What Bangkok did, instead, was launch a high-profile, across-the-board programme to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS, a campaign where the prime minister and the minister of health at that time took active part in.

ESCAP’s appeal this week for greater political dynamism to deal with HIV/AIDS also comes in the wake of a scathing report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which faulted China for fuelling the spread of the pandemic due to ”widespread discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS”.

”Many people living with HIV/AIDS have no access to health care because hospitals refuse to treat them,” the New York-based rights lobby charged in its 94-page report, ‘Locked Doors: The Human Rights of People Living with HIV/AIDS in China’.

”Instead of receiving help for their problem, they are driven underground, making it harder” for the government to combat HIV/AIDS, the report added.

The report’s findings will add to the growing concern that China’s attitude towards HIV/AIDS, despite its stated official recognition of the HIV/AIDS problem, can result in Asia replacing Africa as the continent worst hit by the pandemic.

Currently, Asia’s badly affected areas are India, with 3.9 million people living with HIV/AIDS, China with 800,000, the Russian Federation with 700,000, Thailand with a similar number and Burma with an estimated 500,000.

South and South-east Asia have over six million people living with the virus, while East Asia and the Pacific are home to 1.2 million people with the virus.

By the end of 2002, some 42 million people were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS globally. Sub-Saharan Africa was the worst hit, with 29.4 million people with HIV/AIDS.

Excerpt: