HIV-AIDS in Nepal: The coming crisis

The number of officially reported cases of HIV infection and of AIDS in Nepal remains low in comparison with numbers in many other Asian countries. But Nepal's open border with India (where HIV infection rates are rapidly rising) and the high level of physical mobility within Nepal and abroad, associated with widespread labor migration and encouraged by the recent development of road transport, means that there is a real danger of a rapid spread of HIV within Nepal. The major means of infection is through heterosexual encounters involving male clents and female sex workers, but other sections of the population are also at risk from infection. Media attention has focused on female sex workers, particularly those who have worked abroad in India, but the issue is far broader than this. Social and economic factors forcing or encouraging young men and women to seek employment away from home underlie the widespread growth of "the sex industry" and the "trafficking" of girls and young women. The state's capacity to respond effectively is limited, in part through lack of resources; international agencies are supporting local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in a variety of activities desigend to "educate" and to "support" those at risk; but in the last analysis, it is the local communities from which young men and women migrate and to which they return that are obliged to find ways of coping. Sometimes these communities are supportive of the victims, sometimes not. The spread of HIV-AIDS is not just a "health" issue, but an issue of economic and social development, of gender relations and of human rights.