Global AIDS - Papua New Guinea

This letter is in response to the Feature article - "A Plague On Our Neighbour" carried in The Weekend Australian Magazine, October 9-10, 2004.

Summarised, it read:

"In Papua New Guinea, one in five people could have HIV/AIDS by the end of the decade - and married women are the innocent victims"

Our response as follows:

Papua New Guinea is indeed an HIV/AIDS battleground on Australia's dooratep and there should be no price too high to pay to win that war.

But the government of Papua New Guinea has to get serious and put in some much more realistic funding.

As "A Price Too High To Pay" (October 9-10) revealed, it's PNG's married women who are most at risk.

That's mirroring the widespread case in Africa, where married women are discovering that they're the most vulnerable and that marriage is not the sanctuary they believed.

We are supporting the establishment of PNG's first HIV/AIDS hospice just outside Port Moresby.

Readers are invited to help. Please visit the PNG page at www.aids.net.au

Brian Haill,
President,
The Australian AIDS Fund Inc.,
Frankston, Victoria, 3199.