Thailand

AIDS toll reaches 222,000: EU study

The number of people in the country who have died of AIDS is nine times highter than the official government figure, a European Union researcher said yesterday.

"Much of the discrepancies have to do with the stigma the disease carries," said Alessio Panza, head of the EU AIDS programme in Bangkok and co-author of a new study containing the higher figures.

Since 1985, more than 222,000 Thais have died of AIDS, according to the study conducted jointly by the EU and the Institiute of Population Studies at Chulalongkorn University in the capital.

The Ministry of Public Health said 24,667 deaths could be attributed to the disease. The ministry estimated that 800,000 Thais were infected with HIV.

The disease has become so widespread in Thailand's northern provinces - in the heroin-producing Golden Triangle - that average life expectancy there has dropped to 55 years, compared with 65 for the rest of the country.

Mr Panza said that although the stigma attached to the disease contributed to the Government's lower death figures, there were also other reasons.

"There are not enough qualified medical staff and resources to help the provinical authoritites to classify the type of death," he said.

Many rural people die at home, and the actual cause of death is not always documented by officials, he said.

Many died of tuberculosis but were infected with AIDS, and officials often omitted AIDS when listing the cause of death, to avoid offending families, he said.

1998 © South China Morning Post