The Cost-effectiveness of the Project
Many countries have greatly suffered as a result of HIV and AIDS. Many of them have tried their best to completely finish HIV/AIDS to no avail. However, Thailand has shown the rest of the world that all is not lost in this fight against this pandemic. The leadership of this country came up with a policy that was meant to secure commercial sex workers (Levine, 2007). It entailed issuing condoms to them and imploring them to have sex only when they have condoms. The sad part of this program was the lack of a method to check and analyze the expenditure on this project. This is to say, condoms are issued but their total cost is not known.
This situation should not be left unaddressed. The project is worth a serious analysis of its effectiveness. The financers need to know whether there is any relationship between the amount spent on condoms and the reduction or increase in cases of new infections. The good news is that there has been a drastic increase in the number of condom users and, correspondingly, a big decrease in the number of new infections (Levine, 2007). But it is worth noting that sensitization has also played a big part in this development. Evidence has shown that adverts and general sensitization has saved close to 200,000 people from getting infected.
Current Challenges Facing the Thailand AIDS Program
Levine argues that the government initiative aimed at ensuring that all men visiting sex workers use condoms was very successful in reducing the number of new infections in the formative years of the program (p,13). Contrary to the expectations, this initiative has not been able to handle modern behaviors among youths since it was primarily meant for commercial sex workers. It cannot deal with the rampant pre-marital sex activities among the youth. They are always having sex but not much attention is given to them (HIV & AIDS in Thailand | AVERT, n.d).
Another challenge is overemphasizing sex as the major channel through which HIV spreads. This has become a problem since the government has concentrated on preventing HIV that is spread through sex at the expense of that spread through sharing sharp objects, especially among drug users (HIV & AIDS in Thailand | AVERT, n.d).
The many refugees in Thailand are also among the worst threats. These people hardly settle in one place. Because of this, they lack information about HIV/AIDS. Besides, they cannot effectively communicate with the natives, making their learning process an uphill task. Worse still, they work under very bad conditions (HIV & AIDS in Thailand | AVERT, n.d.).
In recent years, Thailand has been having very little funds allocated for the procurement of ARVs. This has made it difficult to fight the virus. The country has not been able to reach WHO’s standards, and the shortcoming has been blamed on the lack of enough funds (HIV & AIDS in Thailand | AVERT, n.d).
Thailand needs to concentrate on fighting HIV/AIDS by taking the number of new infections to its lowest level ever. At the same time, there is need to completely end HIV transmissions from mother to child at birth (Thailand launches new AIDS strategy to ‘Get to Zero’, 2012).
Evidence of the Effectiveness of this Program
HIV/AIDS has proven to be the commonest killer in the whole world. Most of the deaths occur in Asia and Africa due to the weakening of the victims’ immune systems. Therefore, governments need to advise their citizens to embrace all the proven methods of HIV/AIDs prevention (Jacobsen, 2014). Among these methods, the most effective was the policy that required commercial sex workers to use condoms at all times. It doubled the use of condoms and halved the number of infections in a span of 10 years.
References
HIV & AIDS in Thailand | AVERT. (n.d.). Web.
Jacobsen, K. H. (2014). Introduction to global health. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett LLC.
Levine, R. (2007). Case Studies in Global Health: A Million Saved. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
Thailand launches new AIDS strategy to ‘Get to Zero’. (2012). Web.