Regional Reviews

The first HIV case in the Asia-Pacific region was reported from Thailand in 1984. More than two decades later, HIV continues to spread in this region. The HIV epidemic of the Asia-Pacific is diverse, with different transmission routes predominating in different parts of the region. The epidemics are mainly driven by the behavior of certain key populations at higher risk —injecting drug users (IDUs), female, male and transgender sex workers (SWs) and their clients, and men who have sex with men (MSM).

According to the latest estimates1 in 2007 in Asia there were around 4.9 million (range of 3.7 million – 6.7 million) people living with HIV of whom 440,000 (range of 210,000 – one million) became newly infected in the past year and approximately 300,000 (range of 250,000 – 470,000) died from AIDS-related illness. HIV prevalence in Asia-Pacific has a large variation from almost zero to 2.4 per cent in Papua province of Indonesia.2 Those values are lower than for many other parts of the world, particularly Africa. However, given the substantial number of people living in this region, even a low increasing prevalence of HIV would translate into millions of infections.