Thais go condom crazy at biggest ever AIDS meet

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Waiters wearing condoms on their heads greet diners at the 'Cabbages and Condoms' restaurant in Bangkok and volunteers dole out condoms of all shapes, colours and sizes at cash machines, metro stations and the airport.


Visitors might be forgiven for thinking that Bangkok, infamous as the flesh-pot of southeast Asia, has gone condom crazy on the eve of the 15th International AIDS conference.


For weeks, bright red banners hanging from walkways, flyovers and trees across Bangkok have been announcing the biennial event, due to open on Sunday and expected to draw 15,000 delegates from 160 countries.


"This looks certain to be the largest AIDS conference in history," said Craig McClure, executive director of the International AIDS Society, the main organiser of an event designed to dramatise the need for all victims to get treatment.


Besides armies of scientists, drug company bosses and AIDS victims, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, former South African President Nelson Mandela, Indian ruling party leader Sonia Gandhi and Hollywood heart-throb Richard Gere are due to attend.


Police are taking no chances, even though the meeting is not seen as a terrorist target.


They will deploy a 5,000-strong force during the conference, and say they will take a "softly, softly" approach to a meeting with a history of vocal, but non-violent, confrontation.


"So far, there are no threats or indications from outside, but inside the venue there might be small protests, which are all part of the colour of AIDS conferences," Lieutenant-General Pansiri Prapawat told reporters.


FALLING SHORT


On the eve of the opening ceremony, health experts were confident a U.N. plan to get AIDS drugs to three million people in poor nations by the end of 2005 would work, despite being behind target over the first six months of the project.


"We have to be frank and admit there is a very long way to go," Dr Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, told reporters.


About 440,000 people in the developing world are receiving antiretroviral drugs, 60,000 fewer than the World Health Organisation (WHO) had hoped for last December when it launched its "3 by 5" strategy, as the plan is known.


Aside from more money for the $5.5 billion initiative, a major hurdle is testing for the disease.


More than 90 percent of people do not know whether they have HIV. So most of those who do are severely ill before they are diagnosed, making them harder and more expensive to treat.


A new public-private alliance to promote routine testing met for the first time in Bangkok on Saturday and called for AIDS diagnosis costs to be slashed in the way drugs were in developing countries.


"We need the same dramatic movement on price reductions for diagnostics, not only to see whether people are infected but also to maintain treatment, because that has become sometimes now more expensive than the actual drugs themselves," Piot said.


Nevertheless, he said the "3 by 5" goal was achievable because money was starting to come in, there was the political will and a strategy to provide drugs in poor countries.


Training of healthcare and community workers had started and the infrastructure to deliver treatment in poor countries was mostly there, even if it had not been utilised, he said.


"I am convinced that when we meet in Toronto two years from now we will have moved from the thousands to the millions when it comes to HIV treatment," Piot said of the next AIDS meeting.