Visit to AIDS conference builds understanding.

If someone had told me six months ago that I would visit Angkor Wat and the Taj Mahal this summer, I might have suggested he start going easy on the Jose Cuervo. How would I ever get there?

The answer turned out to be: with a little help from the Gates Foundation and the United Nations Foundation, plus the encouragement of NCEW'S Kate Stanley. Thanks to them, I now have seen the glory that was Angkor and the grandeur that still is the Taj.

More important professionally, I also have a far better understanding of the HIV-AIDS crisis. Our band of brothers and sisters first attended the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, then visited programs and clients in Cambodia and India.

Each of us undoubtedly came away with his own set of lessons, not necessarily limited to the issue of AIDS. For instance, Rosemary Goudreau wrote touchingly in The Tampa Tribune of the fact that Khmer Rouge leaders remain at large, indeed high in the Cambodian government, thirty-five years after the "killing fields" genocide.

As to me, I came back with three major lessons. First, Asia will face a disaster of almost unimaginable proportions if governments, especially in India, do not become more proactive. Second, one of the most important steps is the empowerment of women. Third, the only way AIDS ever will be wiped out is with a vaccine.

The numbers in India are staggering because of the nation's immense population. The HIV infection rate may be only one-half of one percent, but in a nation of one billion people that still is five million. Were India to reach Botswana's infection rate of thirty-five percent, it would have three hundred fifty million victims.

"If we have such a huge AIDS epidemic," Peter Plot, executive director of the U.N. AIDS program, said during a teleconference before the trip, "it is because of decades of denial." There seems to be a lot of denial in India, and not just from a government that spends only twelve million dollars a year on AIDS.

"Where's the media?" one participant in a panel discussion at Bangkok asked. "Where's business? Where's the general public? Where's the schools?"

India is not the only place in Asia where the effort is problematical. In Thailand, long praised for getting out in front of the issue, the condom use rate has fallen from a high of ninety-five percent to nearer fifty percent. Some of us established, through research that will not be discussed further, that a woman has no problem finding a rent boy willing to service her without a condom.

Some of the reasons for the flaccid response in much of Asia are familiar. Many victims are members of groups marginal to society: drug users, male homosexuals, prostitutes. A further complication is the very low status of woman in many of these societies.

In the developing world, many men leave home for weeks or months at a time to find work. They patronize prostitutes and then infect their wives. If the wife asks the husband to use a condom, he beats her. If she seeks treatment, society in general and her family in particular assumes that she and not the husband was unfaithful.

As for prostitutes, many were sold to brothels by relatives when they were girls; one we met in India said she was eleven. They are left with no skills and no options. They will be ostracized if they return home. Some nongovernmental organizations are trying to help, but the need far exceeds the resources.

A real breakthrough for women would be development of an effective and safe microbiocide. That way, a woman could treat herself after sex without her partner's knowledge. In short, it would give her a measure of control over her own health. As it now stands, according to Zeta Rosenberg, CEO of the International Partnership for Microbiotics. "The biggest risk factor for a woman ... is marriage."

Treatment and prevention are vital parts of the anti-AIDS effort, but only a vaccine that prevents infection can eradicate the virus as opposed to limiting it. Vaccines conquered polio and smallpox. Yet there was no mention of vaccines during the opening ceremonies of the conference. Critics say a vaccine is impractical because of the rapidity with which the AIDS virus mutates.

Not so, said Seth Berkley of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. What is needed, he insisted, is for a vaccine to become a political priority so that testing will be accelerated and the industrial sector can be brought on board.

There was a fair amount of talk in Bangkok about the Bush administration, especially on its policies regarding generic drugs and birth control and the level of U.S. support for the world effort. Generally there was more sound than light, with broad agreement only on the point that everyone needs to do more.

Aside from the education, a major plus on the trip was the camaraderie. This was my second NCEW foreign tour (the first was Israel in 2001) and in both cases the participants got along well and formed friendships. I especially bonded with Paul Akers of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Gordon Winters of the Lincoln Journal Star in Nebraska. We were known as the Amari Brothers for the name of the hotel to which we were bounced when the primary hotel in Bangkok was full.

I imagine a lot of members feel they would love to go on a foreign tour but are not sure how to sell it to their bean-counters. If pointing out that an educated editorial writer is a better editorial writer won't do the trick, try explaining that what happens on the far side of the world impacts your readers.

If we don't win the war on AIDS in Asia we will never win it in the U.S., even though we ostensibly bar HIV-postive people from entry. (That's why the World AIDS Conference never has been held here.) Nothing happens anywhere that does not ultimately have some impact on your home town.

Besides, Angkor and the Taj are fabulous.

Bill McGoun is retired from The Palm Beach Post. He is a contributing editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times in North Carolina. He has been a member of NCEW since 1978. E-mail [e-mail]