10/28 Reading (Jon Cohen Article)

From this week’s Jon Cohen article, it’s unclear as to Asia’s future in the HIV AIDS epidemic. In fact, reports can go drastically from one end of the spectrum to the other. Some, like Berkley’s James Chin, believe that a huge Asian outbreak in HIV AIDS isn’t possible, while others, like Tim Brown, believe that given some time – and not that much time at that – Asian will rival Africa in HIV AIDS infections.

Both sides offer good supporting evidence. Chin states that many of the factors involved in the high spread rate in Africa don’t apply to Asia, such as: male circumcision, high rate of multiple sex partners (except for small pockets, which are huge, like sex workers). In addition, Chin explains that heterosexual sex has not been a huge contributing factor in Africa, so why should it be in Asia? However Brown has a different theory. He claims that at the very least the numbers of HIV AIDS infected people will be the same. Perhaps this large number masquerades in a low statistic, but that’s just because China is so large. 15% of China is still almost 200 million people. That’s far more than Africa’s 35 million.

Although both contradicting arguments bring lots of good evidence to the table, they share one thing in particular. Both attribute the large influx in Asia’s HIV AIDS epidemic in recent years to injected drug users (IDUs). This is clear through statistical proof from both sides, no matter what is proposed for the future. Although future plans for China and India in particular are unknown and with differing predictions, with this information, it is imperative that countries with low HIV AIDS rates begin preventative measures with IDUs. No matter what Asian countries with high HIV AIDS prevalence now has in the future, those without can be helped now, by addressing and helping preventative measures with IDUs.