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HEALTH-THAILAND: HIV/AIDs Stalks Burmese Migrant Workers

Marwaan Macan-Markar

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand, Jul 11 2005 (IPS) - It was fear that drove Ma Ne from her home in Burma’s Mon state to this port town famous for its seafood processing factories. She wanted to escape the forced labour policy of the Burmese military regime.

Yet that flight led to a job that brought with it respiratory problems and skin diseases for this 33-year-old who is among thousands of Burmese migrant workers in this town, 28 kms south of Bangkok, labouring in a dank atmosphere that reeks of fish and prawns.

”We start very early, sometimes at dawn,” she said as she cleaned a basket-load of small fish destined to be transformed into fish balls and fish cake at a processing plant. ”’I know about those health problems, but can’t stop.”

However such health hazards that stalk Ma Ne, who earns 145 baht (3.50 dollars) a day cleaning shrimp and fish, appear benign compared to a more deadly disease threatening the Burmese migrant worker community here – HIV/AIDS.

Few among them know just how worrying this threat is as Aung Min, a 43- year-old Mon migrant who has been living here for the past 13 years. ”I know of 300 migrant workers having died from AIDS in recent years,” he said, thoughtfully. ”Some who are very ill with HIV go back to Burma. Last year there were over 30 of these.”

According to Caroline Naw, a nurse from Burma’s Karen state, the fate of migrant workers in this area could worsen because ”almost half of those I have counselled know little about how HIV is spread.”

Others echo similar concern about the increasingly vulnerability of Thailand’s migrant communities are to the virus. It is a reality made worse by the fact that there are ”few government sponsored HIV/AIDS prevention or care activities targeting migrant populations,” states the brochure of a programme run by an alliance of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) championing the cause of migrant workers.

”Various factors related to their occupation and migrant status create barriers in accessing health services or information, increasing their and their partners’ vulnerability to HIV/AIDS,” states a report by the Raks Thai Foundation (RTF), a Bangkok-based NGO.

Many who get infected with HIV will ”not know, and may infect others they are in sexual contact with,” adds the report, which was released ahead of the 15th International AIDS Conference in Bangkok last July.

In fact, a study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reflects how high HIV prevalence rates among migrant women are when compared to Thai women. In Samut Sakhon, there was a 4.3 percent HIV prevalence rate among pregnant migrant workers tested, as opposed to two percent among Thai pregnant women according to the study.

Thailand has close to 670,000 people living with HIV in a population of 64 million. Over 300,000 people have died from AIDS-related causes since the pandemic was first detected here in the 1980s.

At the same time, there are over 1.2 million migrant workers in this South-east Asian country, the majority of whom, over 900,000, are from Burma. Migrant workers from Cambodia and Laos make up for the rest.

And Samut Sakhon is in the province that has one of the largest concentrations of migrant workers – over 130,000 registered workers. Yet it is a figure that could be much higher, even nearing 200,000, if unregistered workers and their families are accounted for, say volunteers who work with the migrants.

The numbers pose a daunting challenge to RTF, which runs five drop-in centres here, disseminates reader-friendly pamphlets and books about the importance of condom use and also conducts visits to factories and homes to reach the migrant workers.

It is an initiative that is part of a broader effort to help as many migrant workers as possible under this programme û Prevention of HIV/AIDS Among Migrant Workers in Thailand (PHAMIT) û that receives funds from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

PHAMIT’s aims to improve reproductive health practices among migrant workers, make the Thai public health system more accessible to them, help strengthen migrant community networks and secure the right to health and treatment.

”The money we received has helped to dramatically increase coverage of those who need help,” Promboon Panitchpakdi, RTF’s executive director, told IPS. ”We now work in 22 provinces where migrant workers are present compared to just six to seven provinces before.”

The NGOs involved in PHAMIT have set their sights on reaching out to nearly 400,000 migrant workers by 2008, when this five-year Global Fund programme ends.

”This intervention is important because it ensures long-term change,” says Promboon. ”The scale of this project will make it difficult for the Thai government to deny the HIV problems faced by migrant workers.”

Such grassroots focus was one of the missions of the Global Fund, which was backed by world leaders at the June 2001 U.N. General Assembly session on HIV/AIDS. It sought to give money with the aim of being a ‘democracy-builder,’ by getting more civic-group and community-group involvement in AIDS prevention programmes.

Aung Min, typifies the bottom-up involvement. The deaths of 300 migrant workers from AIDS has only made him more resolute in helping raise awareness among vulnerable migrants about the dangers from this killer disease.

”Protection, that is my message to them,” he said while walking through a run-down building that houses migrant families in stuffy, airless rooms close to a shrimp market here. ”I also tell them about behaving properly and how HIV is spread.”