Word: viravaidya
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Several factors have contributed to the worsening trends. "We have become complacent," says Mechai Viravaidya, (a.k.a. Mr. Condom), a senator and the principal architect of Thailand's successful anti-AIDS program of the 1990s. "People think because they can't see HIV anymore that we have it kicked, and they are taking risks again." Following the Asia-wide economic crash of 1997, successive Thai governments have slashed budgets for prevention programs to less than half their 1997 levels. Condom funding is down, education programs in schools have ended, and the media campaign has all but disappeared. At the same time...
...Several factors have contributed to the worsening trends. "We have become complacent," says Mechai Viravaidya, (a.k.a. Mr. Condom), a senator and the principle architect of Thailand's successful anti-AIDS program of the 1990s. "People think because they can't see HIV anymore that we have it kicked, and they are taking risks again." Following the Asia-wide economic crash of 1997, successive Thai governments have slashed budgets for prevention programs to less than half their 1997 levels. Condom funding is down, education programs in schools have ended, and the media campaign has all but disappeared. Meanwhile, other avenues...
...pharmaceuticals brought from overseas, even a two-drug treatment can run to $3,500 a month, or more than 75 times the monthly earnings of poor laborers, who are the prime victims of the disease. "The new drugs will help the yuppies of the world," says Thailand's Mechai Viravaidya, a parliament member and leading advocate of AIDS prevention in Bangkok, "but for most people with AIDS, it's like a dog looking up at an airplane: he can see it, but he can never get a seat...
...Pill, a voice for vasectomies -- and a major reason that the annual rate of Thailand's population growth was cut in half, from 3.2% to 1.6%, in just 15 years. And while he sometimes comes across as an energetic public relations man with a bagful of gimmicks, Mechai Viravaidya, 47, the engineer of Thailand's remarkable drive to curb its birthrate, regards population control as serious business...
...Mechai Viravaidya's calling card is a condom. In Bangkok, ambassadors invite him to formal dinners, knowing that he will probably use the occasion to blow up a bright red prophylactic for the host and pass out multicolored birth control pills to the ladies. Sometimes he brings along his latest line in antifertility T shirts or panties bearing the message A CONDOM A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY. Once he passed out free condoms to the entire Bangkok police force, then announced it as his "cops and rubbers" program...
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