CityNews – The 1st December is World AIDS Day and an educational event is planned from 30th November to 1st December at Central Plaza Airport.
The Chiang Mai Public Health Office will host the event, which will offer blood tests, consultations, a Condom Dress Contest, and more education and entertainment throughout the two days.
A campaign called “Getting Zero: zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS-related deaths and zero discrimination” was set up in 2011 and will end in 2015. However, Thailand’s most well-known HIV/Aids awareness campaigner, Mechai Viravaidya, thinks the “government has fallen asleep at the wheel”.
Viravaidya believes that the kingdom should be more worried about the crisis of the lethal virus, and has called on Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to lead it. He says that campaigning against HIV and Aids should be the responsibility of everyone, from religious institutions to schools and businesses.
Estimates for people living with HIV/AIDS in Thailand is hard to pinpoint, as there are many groups of vulnerable people with limited access to healthcare and information, such as ethnic minorities, children, migrants, or victims of trafficking.
The United Nations puts the number of people living with HIV in Thailand in 2012 between 400,000 and 480,000. Their estimate for deaths due to AIDS in 2012 is between 18,000 and 24,000. They have almost no information regarding children up to 14 years old living with HIV.
Paisarn Thanyawinitkun, a Chiang Mai Public Health Doctor, says that there are more than 1 million AIDS patients around Thailand since the outbreak 20 years ago. Only 30% of them are still alive today, and 2% are newly infected, which are mostly youths. Chiang Mai has the third highest number of AIDS patients on record, following Bangkok and Chiang Rai respectively.
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? ? ? ? ? 1 ? (World AIDS Day) ? ? ?.?. 2554 – 2558 ? “Getting to Zero” ? ? “Zero new HIV infections, Zero AIDS-related deaths and Zero discrimination” ? ? ? ? ? ? HIV ? ?… ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 30 ? – 1 ? 2556 ? ? ? 3 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 12.00 ?. ? ? ? ? Condom Dress ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 2556 ? 1,166,543 ? ? ? 38 ? ? 2 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 3 ? ?