THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF

AIDS IN ASIA

Despite Asia's status as Earth's most populous continent, the spread of AIDS there has been slow, with one recent estimate stating that Asian AIDS cases amount to less than 1% of the total worldwide figure. That may change radically and soon.

In Chiang Mai, a city in Northern Thailand, researchers for the Centers for Disease Control (see card 92) are now tracking not only an alarming rise in the epidemic but also indications that HIV will mutate into different strains to adapt to what it finds as most convenient human hosts. Thailand has proven a particularly fertile area for the rise of AIDS because social customs are tolerant of sex-tourism and prostitution, while the country's proximity to the opium-growing region of the Golden Triangle also makes it a haven for intravenous (IV) drug users, 50% of whom are HIV-positive.

Chin-Yih Ou, a molecular biologist for the CDC, thinks AIDS was introduced to Thailand around 1988 and that since then the disease has branched into two separate epidemics, one affecting female prostitutes and their male clients and the other striking a largely separate group of IV drug users. The two populations do not seem to be infected by exactly the same form of HIV, for while one strain of the virus found there flourishes in blood, the other strain thrives in the mucosal membranes of sexual organs.

AIDS demographers warn that Asia's 3 billion population is a fertile ground for the spread of AIDS, in part because traditional societal customs may lead to reluctance to report the disease. Worst-case scenarios predict that the number of Asian people with AIDS could exceed Africa's by the year 2000.

Next Card 81: The Demographics of AIDS IN NORTH AMERICA

AIDS AWARENESS: PEOPLE WITH AIDS

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AIDS IN ASIA