Australian Development Gateway

The Australian Development Gateway (ADG) strives to support members of the development community in their efforts to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region. The site has been created with participation from members of government, private, academia and non-government organisations. User feedback mechanisms have been incorporated to guide future directions of the site. The site is optimised for low bandwidth access to enable the widest participation throughout the Asia Pacific region.

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Asian culture and AIDS (pdf 196kb)

This paper outlines the difficulties faced, discrimination implied and the issue of taboo in relation to the increase of HIV/AIDS in Asia.

Until recently, HIV/AIDS has been defined as an African disease in the public imagination and in the minds of policymakers because most HIV/AIDS infections are in Sub-Saharan Africa. So far prevalence rates in most parts of Asia are still low: nowhere in Asia is there a concentration of disease anywhere close to the numbers seen in Africa, where some communities have prevalence rates between 30 and 40 percent.6 The current scale of Asia's epidemic has more to do with the size of the continent's population than with an explosive spread of the virus.7 Given the tremendous population numbers in Asia, very small increases in prevalence translate into millions of people newly infected.

Topics covered include:

- predictions
- high risk groups
- taboo issues
- the new face of AIDS
- the challenge of response
- beyond women
- global responses
- the steps forward

 

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