UNESCO Bangkok
Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education
Regional Unit for Social and Human Sciences in Asia and the Pacific
Regional Adviser for Culture in Asia and the Pacific
Press Release February 2004
AIDS in Thailand: Visualizing the Epidemic
UNESCO animated maps show the spread of HIV/AIDS in Thailand through time.
BANGKOK - The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has developed a totally innovative concept to depict and study the dramatic progression of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Thailand as part of its mandate to strengthen research.
Using data from the Thailand Ministry of Public Health, UNESCO developed a set of animated maps of HIV/AIDS infection rate by province for the period 1989-2002.
The show starts with an almost bare map in 1989 (when only two provinces had a very low infection rate) that swiftly colours as the epidemic becomes more intense and spreads through more and more provinces.
The UNESCO animated maps are not only visually striking but also provide a tool to study trends in the epidemic. Through UNESCO interactive website, HIV/AIDS researchers can access analysis provided by sophisticated GIS technology without the need for highly specialized and expensive software.
The program allows the automatic sequential browsing for each year's data as well as comparison of infection rates between selected years. The severity of the problem is illustrated by the colour intensity.
The website also presents some animated graphs on the distribution of AIDS cases by age, sex, occupation and risk factors.
UNESCO, the leading agency in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), initiated the Social Sentinel Surveillance Project in 2001, in collaboration with the UN Inter-Agency Project on Trafficking. The aim of that project was the development and testing of a village-based, GIS-linked sentinel surveillance system and computerized database for tracking and analyzing the changing patterns in the trade in girls and women in the Upper Mekong sub-region. It also included the mapping of HIV/AIDS.
The maps are available on the UNESCO Bangkok Trafficking Project website,
www.unescobkk.org/culture/trafficking
http://www.unescobkk.org/culture/trafficking> and can be viewed with any
Internet web browser.
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For further information, please contact:
Dr. David Feingold, Coordinator HIV/AIDS Program
Culture Unit, UNESCO Bangkok,
920 Sukhumvit Rd, Bangkok, 10110, Thailand
Tel: (+66) 2 391 0577 ext. 516
Fax: (+66) 2 391 0866
E-mail:
www.unescobkk.org/culture/trafficking