Guest fountainhall Posted December 21, 2012 Posted December 21, 2012 I hope all Thais and all visitors to Thailand express their gratitude to Meechai Viravaidya. The former senator is better known in this country as the man who firstly led a highly effective birth-control campaign to reign in an out-of-control and unsustainable increase in the population. Promoting the use of condoms was a key part of this campaign. With the emergence of HIV AIDS, he renewed his energy to make condoms available to all and, more importantly, to make them as common and as well known as sex itself. He succeeded. Now many Thais still call a condom a “meechai”! Even tourists flock to his Cabbages and Condoms restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 12. http://www.cabbagesa...s.com/index.php How many lives Khun Meechai and his fellow campaigners saved through their own efforts and in succeeding to persuade the government to undertake major anti-HIV promotion campaigns, no-one can tell. But one United Nations study estimates that it cut infection rates by a whopping 90% during the period 1991 – 2002. Sadly, though, successive governments have continually reduced the amount of money for awareness campaigns. As a direct result, older Thais forgot the message, and younger Thais grow up all but ignorant not only of HIV but crucially of how it can be contracted. This itself is one of the reasons why the rate of HIV infection amongst msm in cities like Bangkok is said to border on 25%. Khun Meechai is acknowledging publicly that everything has now changed – dramatically. ''I innocently thought I had done the job … but the government has fallen asleep at the wheel.” . . . the infection rate is again steadily rising, with 9470 new cases a year being reported, eighty percent of them caused by unsafe sex. About 62 per cent of the 464,414 people known to be infected with the virus in the country are male, the Thai Ministry of Health says. Mechai warns that an estimated 250,000 Thais are unaware they are carrying the HIV virus. ''They are not going for testing and they are having sex around the place,'' he says. ''Getting them to be tested should be a priority.'' Mechai calls on the Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, to take charge immediately of a campaign blitz on sex. ''The Prime Minister could stand up and declare there is again a problem that is sending Thais to early graves,'' he says. ''The campaign should involve everyone, from religious institutions to schools and businesses.'' . . . A Ministry of Health campaign centred on a ''zero new infections'' slogan has had little impact, he says. ''Nobody in government is pushing this. It's pathetic. If you stopped advertising Coca-Cola people would stop drinking it. We have to do the same … talk condoms, condoms and condoms.'' And another voice is raised in protest. . . . the celebrated monk Alongkot Dikkapanyo, who has seen 30,000 AIDS victims die at his hillside temple, warns that a new wave of mainly young Thais face infection. ''A big problem facing our country now is that young boys and young girls - 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 - are having sex and not protecting themselves,'' says Alongkot . . . At least one person becomes HIV-positive every hour in Thailand, joining more than a million Thais who have been infected since the first case was reported here in 1984. Read more: http://www.smh.com.a...l#ixzz2FfCd0dka Quote
