SPECIAL EDITION

Hush Hush Na Wa Ta Disease

By Kanbawza Win, January 5, 2001

Mizzima News Group (www.mizzima.com )

The international community recognized this scourge as Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV/AIDS but, in rural areas of Burma, the local people call it Na Wa Ta disease.

There are two reasons for this. The first one is that during the Ne Win administration of Burmese Socialist Programme Party days, Burma boasted about not having a single AIDS patient in the country. True, because the country was a hermit kingdom and its closed door policy had effectively shut out not only AIDS but also trade and tourism not to mention foreign investment.

But when the Burmese army took power in 1988 under the name of Na Wa Ta (in English it is known as State Law and Order Restoration Council now the SPDC), killing some 20,000 people, it changed its policy to the Burmese Army Way to Capitalism and opened up the country. HIV/AIDS was among the first to come in. Most Generals are poorly educated to run a country. Being bumpkins in health affairs, they obviously did not take any necessary precautions, justifying their approach as part and parcel of opening up the country. Now HIV/AIDS has reached an epidemic proportion.

The second reason is that General Ne Win, the great helmsman, has a great appetite for sex, having five official wives (Daw Tin Tin, Mrs.Taunggyi known as Daw Khin May Than, Daw Ni Ni Myint, Yadana Nat Mai and back to Daw Ni Ni Myint, other unofficial wives are not accounted for).

He looks the other way when his soldiers commit sexual offenses, especially in ethnic areas because the generals construe this as implementing the Mahar Myanmar race policy. This is tantamount to encouraging the soldiers to commit rape. As HIV/AIDS is related to sex U Ne Win automatically became the father of AIDS in addition to being the father of the Burmese army. Since Na Wa Ta is one of his creations the people jokingly call AIDS the Na Wa Ta disease as more than 10 percent of the soldiers (about 4,400,00) are infected.

AIDS is now orphaning children, wrecking the people's lives in unprecedented numbers and undoing what little development had being achieved. HIV positive persons will die within a decade which is also the fate of the impoverished average Burmese. Worst of all, there is no cure. The rich will be condemned to a life preserving cocktail of powerful drugs. In eastern and northern Burma, the AIDS virus lurks and spreads everywhere. We are sure that the numbers incubating HIV who will probably die of AIDS is far larger than what Burmese army killed in 1988.

. The current military Junta has already broken the record of its predecessor regime when the WHO ranked Burma as second last among the 191 nations in the quality of health care (Sierra Leone was last) while the Burmese Socialist Programme Party only achieved the least developed country status. The Generals often argue that the civilian figure of over 700,000 HIV/AIDS cases estimated by the researchers of the World Bank was just a political ploy to discredit the regime. The Junta claims that only 40,000 were affected by Na Wa Ta disease. Fanned by cheap heroine and the booming sex trade the AIDS crisis has spun out of control. Exporting young girls to Thailand an action indirectly encouraged by the government, and the returning prostitutes from the neighboring countries have compounded the problem. Dr. Frank Smithuis of M S F ( Medicins Sans Frontieres) who has spent six years working on HIV/AIDS prevention in Burma cited the figure as between 200,000 to one million.

"It is hard to give a good estimates and is probably higher than has been thought taking into consideration for those who have died. It is high and is rising and nobody is doing anything about it."

The Junta could not admit it for obvious reasons, instead rely on conservative social mores. Their hypothesis is that extramarital sex is rare while the cultural value of the girl is to preserve her virginity. It also used to point out the absence of a sex industry, such as found in Thailand and Philippines However it did not take into consideration the economic factor where young girls have to sell their bodies just to survive.

The new fear for the Burmese was worse than the Junta is AIDS. Huge populations are at risk and Burma will soon top the list of Asian countries in AIDS cases The invisible cases under reported in a climate of denial that unsafe and promiscuous sex is rife. It appears that the virus has passed out of the world of commercial sex to thrive among pregnant women who have had sex only with their husbands. It will soon paralyze the nation if this denial goes on.

Neighbouring countries have made attempts to address the issue of treating and preventing HIV infection. Thailand is at the vanguard of such action even though the efforts are sparse and the tools are often crude. Cambodia is considered to have the highest infection rate at about 4% of its adult population. Thailand is at about 2%. But they have received millions of dollars to help fight the disease. However, in the case of Burma, there are few donors who are willing to extend a hand to a regime which has such a horridus records of human rights violations. China and Pakistan are friendly to the Junta but tend to help the Burmese military but only with guns and bullets, not with pills to fight this dreaded disease.

A drug use epidemic followed a huge increase in heroin supply in 1988 when the democracy movement was gun down. In order to divert the youth from political activism, the Burmese army indirectly encouraged the use of narcotic drug heroin and addiction to it increased dramatically. A unique Burmese culture of sharing needles in the tea stall has also contributed to the spread of AIDS.

The denial by the Junta deepens the AIDS epidemic. The Junta's figures (which have not been made public but made available to the scientists abroad) show that the infection rate among Burmese prostitutes has soared to the levels of Africa. The rises in.

Rangoon and Mandalay average 47%, that is three times the rate in Thailand. AIDS has been rapidly increasing, especially among the teen age girls, because of increased poverty and the military program of forced relocation. In fact it has reached a catastrophe stage while the Junta endeavours to regard it as a "hush hush" disease. However, in a closed door meeting of the generals they admitted that the problem existed and very lately has started to import condoms. It was even rumored that the old man U Ne Win, who will be on the wrong side of 90 this May 24th, promised that Daw Ni Ni Myint would be his last wife. Perhaps he has some respect for this former history tutor as she heads the historical commission and he does not want to go down in history as a rogue.

Prominent medical doctors in Burma have to tell the world what the Junta want them to say but in private they admit the hopelessness of the situation. Counseling is virtually nonexistent; condoms, which were banned by the Generals until 1993, are prohibitively far expensive for most people. Free AIDS testing is rare, and most people cannot afford the $10 (nearly Kyats 5,000) test to determine if they have this Na Wa Ta disease. Once a patient is diagnosed, the doctors said, he or she dies within three months. There are virtually no anti HIV drugs in the country. Besides there is an acute shortage of antibiotics.

The virus is also spreading in jails where a prisoner can obtain a little extra food for a blood donation and where transfusion equipment is often reused without cleaning. Far worse the disease is spreading to the monasteries. Many infected young men, shunned by their friends and family have moved into the monasteries to die. Several of the monks are also infected by AIDS. They have contracted the disease by shaving the heads with the razors shared among them.

A combination of ravaging Na Wa Ta disease, an atrocious health-care system and the Junta's refusal to admit these medical problems has condemned the Burmese to a life- expectancy of less than 45 years for the next two decades or so. It seems that even if the Burmese military Junta goes its partner AIDS or Na Wa Ta disease will continue to stay in the country for quite some time.