The 9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific is being held in Bali, Indonesia from 9 to 13 August and has drawn participants from governments, the private sector, civil society, and multilateral agencies, including ADB.

Asia's rapid rollout of infrastructure in recent years, including cross country transport and economic corridors, has helped cut poverty and provided many new jobs. However, an increase in mobility presents serious challenges for the spread of communicable diseases, including HIV. Infrastructure continues to play an important role in ADB's operations, with the transport sector alone accounting for a quarter of total lending from 2004 to 2008.

“The confluence of 'mobile men' with money - away from family and social connections - and with interaction with local communities and other mobile populations that often follow construction camps, all make for a heightened HIV-vulnerable setting,” Ms. Schaefer-Preuss told the congress.

In response, ADB is expanding its existing HIV action plans for infrastructure projects beyond the construction phase, to include the preparation and post-construction stages. It is supporting government partners to develop and implement HIV plans for the infrastructure sector and is working with development partners to find ways of harmonizing and scaling up the impact of HIV interventions to make them more sustainable, Ms. Schaefer-Preuss said.

The Congress participants also discussed the Commission on AIDS in Asia's report of 2008, which found that effective prevention campaigns for groups most at risk of HIV infection can avert up to 80% of new infections.

In this context, to better design and implement the prevention campaign at the local level, ADB is working with developing member countries and partners to improve and expand collection and sharing of data on HIV and AIDS through a regional data hub, supported by ADB, UNICEF, UNAIDS and WHO. Accurate and timely data are essential for national or regional policymakers to identify priority areas for intervention, and to allocate resources where they are most needed.

“Often, national and regional responses to HIV/AIDS have been undermined by generic approaches, which do not address the major local drivers of the epidemic in each setting. Therefore, the need for accurate and good quality data, as well as the capacity to interpret those data, remains to be important,” Ms. Schaefer-Preuss said.

As of December 2008, ADB has committed a total of about $112 million for HIV/AIDS activities, including $98 million in grants, $14 million in regional and other technical assistance projects.

During the conference, ADB will also participate in discussions about the threat posed by the global economic crisis to resource funding for HIV prevention and AIDS treatment programs.#