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The Public Health Ministry’s stock of free condoms supplied to commercial sex establishments is likely to run out in the next three months due to budget cuts.
The ministry is slashing its 1998 budget allocation for work on preventing and controlling Aids. It had a proposed budget of 65 million baht to supply condoms but will now reduce the number supplied from 50 million to 10 million a year.
An estimated annual 120 million commercial sex acts take place, said an official at the Communicable Diseases Control department who declined to be named.
He said the ministry needed to inform condom distributors in advance so that they could now make them commercially available
The ministry has also had to cut the amount spent on buying anti-retroviral drugs, used by people with HIV/Aids, from 300 million baht to about 100 million baht this year.
And it will no longer hand out free anti-retroviral drugs to sufferers. They will only be given to patients who doctors say can be followed up.
Under the first phase of a four-month-old project, around 2,000 patients at 45 hospitals were recruited to receive a combination of anti-retroviral drugs.
Dr Chatyos Kunanusont, of the Aids Division said the main objective of the ministry's change in policy followed a study which showed that out of some 4,000 patients who received AZT between 1991-1995, 90 percent could not get hold of them regularly.
He also said it had been shown that a combination of two drugs helped people live longer and that the new policy on controlled distribution would help doctors learn more about what would be the most effective treatment.
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