NAN, 1 December 2013 Several provinces in Thailand have been campaigning on World Aids Day to raise awareness about the disease in order to reduce the number of people infected with it.
World AIDS Day is celebrated globally on December 1st of every year in hopes to eliminate the disease in the near future. From 2011-2015, it is celebrated under the theme “Getting to Zero: Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths.” Several provinces have launched the campaign to raise this awareness to their residents.
Nan provincial public health representative, Piya Siriluck, revealed that there are around 4,000 HIV patients in Nan. He added around 1,000 of them are taking medicine to help alleviate HIV symptoms. He also asked for the people not to make judgment or discriminate against them.
Currently, there is an estimate of 440,000 people in Thailand who are still living with HIV, according to UNAIDS. Since the first discovery of HIV/AIDS patients in 1984, the country has come a long way in tackling the issue of both caring for infected patients and preventing people from such infection.
