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Thailand stifles AIDS campaign.


 Fearing that it is damaging the country's lucrative tourist industry, Thailand's new government has greatly toned down a much praised AIDS awareness campaign. Announcing the decision, the new deputy public health minister, Charoon Ngamphichet, explained that the previous government's AIDS awareness efforts had seriously affected the tourist industry (which nets 2.5 billion British pounds a year). The minister has also rejected UN projections claiming that by the year 2000, 1 in 4 adults in Thailand will be infected with HIV, calling the estimate "overblown." On April 28, the director of the UN's HIV and AIDS development program, Elizabeth Reid, said in a news conference that Thailand has one of the most rapidly spreading epidemics ever documented, and that by the year 2000, 1/4 of all Thai adults will test positive for HIV. Noting that an unchecked epidemic would undermine the country's development, Reid praised the awareness efforts instituted by the interim government that cane in to power February 1991, following a military coup. This campaign had been formulated by then-Public Health Minister Mechai Viravaidya, known in Thailand as "Mr. Condom" for his efforts to promote birth control and control the spread of AIDS. Before leaving office, Viravaidya warned that by the end of 1991, between 200,000 and 400,000 Thais were already infected with HIV, and that the figure would increase to between 2 and 4 million by 2000 if an effective campaign was not continued. Viravaidya maintains that the tourist sex industry (catering to Americans, Europeans and Japanese) is only a contributory factor of the epidemic. More important, he says, 90% of all Thai males engage in commercial sex at some point in their lives. It is estimated that 37% of all prostitutes in Bangkok are HIV positive.
