Yangon (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Myanmar is heading towards an HIV epidemic that might spread to its neighbours, especially China, this according to experts who have challenged the ruling military government’s rosy forecast.

Officially the HIV infection rate has dropped. Figures for 2005 indicate that it fell to 1.3 per cent of those aged 15 to 49, or about 350,000 people, from 2.2 per cent five years earlier. Among pregnant women, the rate has remained steady at about 1.5 per cent in urban areas throughout the decade. The situation in rural towns and villages is hard to gauge because the public health-care system itself is in a critical condition, struggling to function on meagre funding. And there are concurrent reasons for grave concern. Among people aged 15-24, the infection rate is a high 2.2 per cent. Many experts agree for example that the official figures are not reliable for the lack of monitoring tools, shoestring budgets and the ruling junta’s obsession with secrecy over health care data.

Chinese Health Ministry officials said in November that Myanmar's infection rate is probably four or five times what their data indicate

“I think what we can say for now is that [Myanmar's] figures are likely a very significant underestimate, and the true numbers of infected individuals is much, much higher,” said Dr Voravit Suwanvanichkij, an epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Chiang Mai.

“The folks at John Hopkins recently published an estimate that [the Myanmar government] spent less than US$50,000 [on countering HIV and AIDS] in the last year,” said Laurie Garret, Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. But “I've heard other folks say that through secondary mechanisms such as the UN that it might be up to $2 million nationwide.”International money, medics and experts brought in to the reclusive country to track and combat its HIV/AIDS problem have recently been called back, apparently because of the military government's suspicions that foreign aid workers were too sympathetic toward the political opposition. For instance, in August 2005, the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria cancelled its US $37.5 million programme in Myanmar, blaming tight government restrictions on its movements that made working nearly impossible. Medecins Sans Frontieres pulled out of the country's war-torn Karen and Mon states last March for similar reasons. In November, the International Committee of the Red Cross was ordered to close all its offices outside of Yangon. Similarly, local non governmental groups trying to prevent infections and care for sufferers are often harassed by security forces.

This means that unless Myanmar’s “epidemic is confronted and there is a real aggressive campaign, then the whole region will continue to receive new strains of HIV, part of the fluid movement of the black market across southern Asia in drugs, sex and labour,” said Garrett. (PB)