Asian Development Bank (ADB)

National HIV/AIDS programmes world wide comprise a variety of interventions or actions aimed at reducing spread of HIV, providing care & support to the affected and alleviating socio-economic and human impact.

This is a toolkit to guide the management and implementation of HIV prevention programmes for mobile populations in the Greater Mekong Subregion. It will be used by people and organisations who already have some experience in HIV prevention, and are now ready to address the specific challenges of working with mobile populations. Specifically, the toolkit addresses ways to work with mobile groups of construction workers, truck drivers, seafarers and migrant sex workers.

The paper discusses the key health challenges in the post-2015 development agenda for Asia and the Pacific, a highly populated, diverse region of countries with different health needs and priorities.

The Long-Term Strategic Framework of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) commits it to supporting the pursuit of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the region and in ADB’s developing member countries (DMCs). MDG 6 is to halt and begin to reverse the spread of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency (AIDS) by 2015. However, progress in this direction has not been encouraging and there is great concern that the number of people infected in the Asia and Pacific region and in particular countries, including Viet Nam, could still significantly grow.

Viet Nam is a source country for labour migration with extensive outmigration for Vietnamese workers to countries in Asia and worldwide, actively supported by the Vietnamese Government as a key economic development strategy. Within the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), Vietnamese migration is largely irregular. Cambodia is the most popular destination, with an estimated 49,000 Vietnamese migrants in 20091 working in trades, services, and construction, and a further 1 million who relocated to Viet Nam between 1985 and 1998 and still have irregular status.

China is both a source and destination country for migration in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS). Chinese migrants work in all GMS countries, primarily as professional or low-skilled workers employed in Chinese companies along the GMS economic corridors or as informal sector workers and small traders.

Internal migration in Thailand is largely from the north-eastern rural areas and the conflict-affected areas in the south to the Greater Bangkok region. Thai women tend to find employment in entertainment, sales, and garment work and men in such jobs as cleaners, drivers, and in factories. Thai nationals also work in small numbers in Lao PDR and China. 

HIV/AIDS is a human tragedy and a real and growing threat to Asia's economic prosperity. It is a fundamental development issue that the Asian Development Bank, as a broad-based development institution focused on poverty alleviation, must address.

With the overarching objective of reducing poverty, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) strategy for Papua New Guinea (PNG) focuses on strengthening governance, supporting private sector development, and improving social conditions.

The HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in Rural Development Enclaves Project proposes to help strengthen government leadership and the implementation of strategies to contain the spread of HIV among rural populations.