Tackling HIV in Malaysia

ACON played host to a delegation of six representatives from Malaysian HIV/AIDS non-governmental organisation PT Foundation last week in an exchange facilitated through a grant by the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade and the Australia Malaysia Institute.

PT Foundation Acting Executive Director Raymond Tai told the Star Observer his group faced many challenges in its work — not least Malaysia’s gay sex laws.

“We work in a very resource tight environment but we have developed partnerships and collaboration programs, one of which is this partnership with ACON which we hope will lead to a lot more collaborative work,” Tai said.

“In the past we were a very small volunteer-driven organisation but as we grew bigger and catered to more diverse groups we’ve had to start introducing programs and staffing.”

Tai said PT Foundation was once able to rely on overseas funding, but this was pulled in 2004 when Malaysia was reclassified “upper-middle income” by donors.

“Then the Malaysian Government stepped in and realised the good work we were doing,” Tai said.

“The last five years have been a turn around — they have been a lot more supportive, at least financially, and we now have a National Strategic Plan for HIV.”

High transmission rates among vulnerable groups have recently made Malaysia eligible for Global Fund funding and PT Foundation hope to start accessing this next year.

An estimated 87,000 Malaysians have been infected with HIV since 1986 with that epidemic largely driven by intravenous use. But while new infection rates have dropped overall, infections from heterosexual and homosexual sex are on the rise.

“In 2009 we started a surveillance study,” Tai said.

“For MSM the prevalence rate was 3.9 percent — among female sex workers its 10.6 percent and among transgender its 9.7 percent.”

But as drug users are tested every time they are arrested or enter rehabilitation, data on them is much better in Malaysia than for other marginalised communities so there are concerns about the accuracy of this data.

However Tai said one area where Malaysia was leaps and bounds ahead of Australia was rapid testing for HIV- an area that ACON are keen to pick their brains about.

“The Government is very supportive of rapid testing and it’s used in all hospitals and clinics,” he said.

“They have introduced … anonymous testing and that’s available at all centres. But with most at risk populations like MSM there are still a lot of doubts about how confidential that is as you have to go through a lot of departments to get anonymous testing. So that’s why the community based setting that we have has been highly successful.”

ACON and others have been pushing for the federal government to fund rapid testing in Australia which can determine a person’s HIV status in as little as 30 minutes.

info: www.ptfmalaysia.org