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During 2007, some 2.5 million people became newly infected with the virus. Around half of all people with HIV are infected before 25 years of age and die of AIDS before 35. Around 95 percent of people with HIV/AIDS live in developing nations. But HIV today is a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world.
World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away and that there is still much to be done. However, in Burma, HIV/AIDS activists and volunteers are being threatened and suppressed daily by the military authorities.
Maggin Monastery in Rangoon’s Thingangyun township, where HIV patients were being cared for, was raided in September, 2007. According to witnesses, soldiers and riot police broke into the monastery and violently arrested four monks, including the abbot and four people caring for the HIV patients. Then Burma’s military authorities sealed the monastery and forced a number of monks suspected of being supporters of the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as the dozen HIV/AIDS patients who lived there, to leave.
Threats and arrests of HIV/AIDS workers is not only disturbing for the volunteers, but is also disheartening and daunting for the patients. The volunteers take on several duties, including buying medicine for patients, arranging food and temporary shelter for them and helping them get treatment at NGO-sponsored clinics. They also are responsible for sending the children of deceased patients to orphanages.
At a press conference in Bangkok on Nov. 25, the international medical aid group Médecins Sans Frontières – Doctors without Borders – said Burma's military regime must act now to deal with one of the most serious epidemics of HIV/AIDS that Asia has ever faced. Almost 25,000 people will die this year of HIV/AIDS in Burma unless lifesaving treatments are significantly increased, according to MSF’s new report.
MSF said that if Burma does not get the funds it needs for antiretroviral drugs, some 24,000 people could die next year from the disease. MSF also said that, in 2007 alone, AIDS-related illnesses killed 25,000 people.
According to MSF’s report, which was also released on Nov. 25 in Bangkok, an estimated 240,000 people in the military-ruled country are thought to have HIV/AIDS. Of these, 76,000 are in urgent need of antiretroviral treatment, yet less than 20 percent of them currently have access to it.
The report, “A Preventable Fate: The Failure of ART Scale-up in Myanmar,” states that Médecins Sans Frontières is providing treatment to about 11,000 patients, while the military regime, the United Nations and several non-governmental groups are taking care of only 4,000 patients.
"It is unacceptable that a single NGO is treating the vast majority of HIV patients in a crisis of this magnitude. It is unacceptable because it is wholly inadequate. We cannot meet the needs, and we therefore call upon those who can to take up this responsibility," stated Joe Belliveau, operations manager for MSF.
The government and the international community have provided very little during the crisis, Belliveau added.
In 2008, the junta allocated the equivalent of US 0.7 cents per person to healthcare, of which about US$200,000 in total was allocated to the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. With growing revenue from oil and gas exports, the junta must provide more for its ailing health system, and specifically for HIV/AIDS care and treatment, the MSF report says.
Burma, which faces economic sanctions by the West due to its poor human rights record, earned US$2.7 billion from natural gas exports to Thailand last year, according to a November 2008 issue of the Myanmar Times weekly, which cited government officials.
Drugs not offered by aid organizations or the regime cost a patient US$29 per month. With most people in Myanmar living on an average of $1.20 per day, the cost of drugs is too expensive for patients, most of whom are poor. The junta spends an estimated 0.3 percent of its gross domestic product on health, one of the lowest rates worldwide.
The aid organization also appealed to the international community to take part to efficiently ward off the crisis. At present, Burma receives around US$3 per person in aid, one of the lowest rates in comparison with other countries. One reason may be that international donor groups are disinclined to offer aid to Burma, a country run by a strict military junta widely criticized for its atrocious human rights record.
An HIV/AIDS project run by the National League for Democracy on behalf of its detained leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been harassed from time to time by military authorities. The authorities are risking lives and increasing the dangers of the HIV epidemic in the country by preventing volunteers and foreign aid workers from giving essential aid to patients suffering from this catastrophic disease.
In 2005 and 2006, a research team from Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, led by Dr. Chris Beyrer, carried out field investigations in Burma and researched the medical literature and policy related to HIV, TB, malaria and avian flu in Burma.
The researchers found that the military junta's investment in healthcare is one of the lowest in the world and that the health sector has been weakened by widespread corruption. The junta has also weakened the country's laboratory infrastructure, say Beyrer and his researchers, due to disinvestment and through creating a dearth of skilled personnel.
Burma’s authoritarian military regime is widely condemned for its human rights abuses. The regime is accustomed to preventing aid workers, journalists and diplomats from visiting the temporary dwellings for HIV patients being looked after by kind-hearted volunteers. In August 2005, these concerns led the Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria, a global financing group, to withdraw its proposed US$98.4 million in grants for the country.
It is difficult for foreign volunteers to secure visas to enter Burma if they are recognized as being involved in humanitarian-related fields. In addition, the head of the United Nations in Burma, Charles Petrie, was expelled for simply drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis plaguing Burma.
As Médecins Sans Frontières states in its new report, thousands of people are needlessly dying due to a severe lack of HIV/AIDS treatment in Burma. The people of Burma are dependent upon how the United Nations and ASEAN will take into account the findings of this report and the fate of HIV patients in this military-run country.
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(Zin Linn is a freelance Burmese journalist living in exile. He currently serves as information director of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma in Bangkok, Thailand. He is also vice-president of the Burma Media Association, which is affiliated with the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers. He can be contacted at uzinlinn@gmail.com. ©Copyright Zin Linn.)
