Page 81 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

OF DESIRE, THE FARANG, AND TEXTUAL EXCURSIONS 75

The AIDS epidemic has reached crisis proportions in Thailand. Since the
first cases of HIV infection in Thailand were reported around 1984, the
figures of newly reported cases have been steadily soaring. The Economist
reported that in 1989, with only limited diagnostic technologies, Thailand
had already accounted for half of all the cases of HIV infection in all of
Asia (‘Thailand: AIDS homes in,’ 1989). In 1994, the National Public
Radio claimed that one in every fifty Thais is now infected with HIV, and
the ratio could climb to one in fifteen infected by the end of the decade
(National Public Ratio, 1994). More recently, in December 1995, the
regional office of the World Health Organization in Southeast Asia reports
that of all the Southeast Asian countries that report to WHO, Thailand has
88% of the total number of HIV infection cases in the entire region. Both
the World Health Organization and the Public Health Ministry of Thailand
have projected that if public awareness and education can change drug
use and sexual behavior rapidly and positively, the rate of HIV infection
will peak in mid to late 1990s and the cumulative number of HIV cases by
the turn of the century will be four million (Rhodes, 1991). The World
Health Organization estimates that at least 10 million Asians will be
infected by 2000 and that AIDS will kill more people on the Asian region
than in any other (…). (Shenon, 1992)

In Thailand, the growing awareness of the serious consequences of the HIV
pandemic has built an impressive system producing a large quantity of statistical
information and other non-quantitative forms of knowledge about the epidemic
in the country. This is evident in the sentinel surveillance system initiated in
1989 that reports seroprevalence in a number of target groups in all provinces
every two years. Supplementing this data with information about the impact of
the epidemic on specific subpopulations are cohort and follow-up studies that
have been carried out among military recruits, commercial sex workers, pregnant
women, and newborns. Dutch researcher Han ten Brummelhuis suggests that
contrary to popular belief, Thailand could claim to be one of the first countries
where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is systematically documented with the greatest
detail and reliability. He observes that ‘[n]o western country will be able to
compete due, among other things, to ethical juridical constraints in blood testing’
(1993:3).
Brummelhuis also suggests that the first AIDS cases since 1984 could be
traced to foreign contacts, although not with complete certainty in all instances.
He writes, ‘There is no evidence to establish the first route in this intercountry-
transmission. Probably it happened almost simultaneously: Thai who had sexual
contacts abroad bought the virus back home, Westerners having sex with Thai
took it to Thailand, and HIV entered Thailand also through sharing of drug use
equipment between foreigners and Thai’ (ibid.). He argues that since 1988 a
pattern has developed that makes it difficult to apply Western epidemiological
categories in terms of exclusively heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual