Financial Times

Major UNAIDS study to be released in Colombo
Economic impact of HIV/AIDS
By Feizal Samath
UNAIDS, a group of institutions including UN agencies and the World Bank, is to shortly launch a study on the impact of HIV/AIDS on economies in Asia aimed at focussing on the overall effect on households, productivity losses and health care costs among other issues.

“We plan to begin this study shortly undertaken by developmental economists in the region,” said J.V.R. Prasada Rao, UNAIDS Director of the Regional Support team, Asia Pacific. In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said the full economic impact of HIV/AIDS is yet unknown and not understood by countries in terms of the economic ramifications and in this context also reducing the rate of infections.

Rao, in Colombo for a series of meetings with government and private sector officials, said the study involving research from all countries including Sri Lanka, would be released at a major conference in Colombo next year.

The UNAIDS director was pleased to learn the progress of Colombo’s business community where there is growing awareness of HIV/AIDS in the workplace and the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, through seminars and in-house sessions. Many of the chambers have also launched into awareness programmes on this issue supported by the ILO office in Colombo.

He said in most countries in the region the business community is still to grasp the impact of HIV/AIDS on business and the economy. “That’s a problem”.
Rao said while the national programme is Sri Lanka was good it still needed a bigger political commitment, saying the government should pay more attention to the issue and ensure that a larger number of NGOs are working in this field. NGOs are the link between the government and high risk groups including commercial sex workers. “The political leadership should talk about it openly and bring it into the public domain. This is a good opportunity when the prevalence rate is low (in Sri Lanka) to create more awareness on this issue,” he said.

He said the government should be candid, open and speak freely on the issue.
In Asia, some 8.3 million people are infected with HIV with some countries showing worrying trends like Papua New Guinea where two percent of the general (adult) population are affected.

Nepal (1.5-1.6 % of adult population) and Myanmar (1.2%) also have dismal records since the authorities haven’t shown any commitment towards tackling this problem.

Rao said the threshold level of infections is one percent and below, and anything above this is of concern because it could then affect the general population and then containing it becomes a problem. In India, the number of affected is 0.9 percent.

The UNAIDS director said the overall rate in Asia is still below the danger level of one percent providing a golden opportunity for the region to contain the level of infections.

He praised countries like China, Thailand and even Vietnam that were effective in this area. In China, the government was providing solid backing to the national programme while Thailand has seen an admirable reduction in the number of infections.

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