
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994                   TAG: 9408080059
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Boston Globe
DATELINE: YOKOHAMA, JAPAN                                LENGTH: Medium

IS AIDS FIGHT FALTERING?

Leading physicians from the United States, Thailand and India warned Saturday that the international battle against AIDS is not going well, and the numbers of people who eventually die from the disease may be vastly greater than has been predicted.

``Recent reports from the World Health Organization suggest that comparing this epidemic to the Black Death scourge that once stalked Europe, killing 25 percent of the population, may not be overdrawn,'' said James Allen, vice president for science of the American Medical Association.

``It is frightening to consider that, in the past 12 months alone, the number of full-blown AIDS cases increased from 2.5 million to 4 million - a startling 60-percent increase in one year.''

Allen, at a day of briefings arranged by the AMA in advance of the beginning of the 10th International Conference on AIDS here this afternoon, said there were 10,000 new AIDS cases a day over the past year.

He stressed that the number of cases in Asia increased 800 percent, from 30,000 to 250,000, and that much greater increases are likely in coming years.

Public health officials from Thailand, India and Japan gave grim reports of trends in their countries.

Lastest reports from the hardest-hit areas of Thailand are that 50 percent of hospital beds are occupied by AIDS patients and 20 percent of young men being recruited into the army are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes the disease.

In India, P.K.K. Choudhuri, president of the Indian Medical Association, said infections are increasingly rapidly and the medical association ``is seriously concerned about the [inadequate] level of knowledge of medical practitioners.''

He said that in a recent survey in which more than 500 doctors were asked a set of basic questions about AIDS, only one physician was able to answer 90 percent of the questions correctly.

The epidemic has been intensified by the poor quality of Indian-made condoms, he said, and by the fact that there are only 180 HIV testing centers for the world's second most populous country.

Infection rates are much lower in Japan than most other countries, said Shimpei Ozaki, director of the nation's infectious-disease control bureau, but some doctors and hospitals are refusing to treat AIDS patients, and a program to establish a nationwide network of AIDS-treatment facilities is lagging badly.

Michael Merson, executive director of the World Health Organization's AIDS program, said that, in addition to the already large and diffuse numbers of AIDS and HIV cases in India and Thailand, the epidemic is spreading rapidly in parts of Vietnam, China and Malaysia.

by CNB