Tucked in lush rural hills, Thailand?s ?AIDS temple? aims to shock people out of their complacency with a macabre display of withered corpses and bones of the rejected dead. Each day, scores of visitors troop through the country?s largest Buddhist hospice, snapping pictures in hospital wards, the crematorium and a ?Life Museum?.

The first stop on a tour of Wat Phrabaht Nampu temple is a glass-windowed room where 12 formaldehyde-preserved bodies lie exposed on wooden slats. Their dark brown, leathery skin is stretched taut over bones. Snapshots next to each body remind viewers that the remains in front of them were once healthy people, living ordinary lives. They include a sex worker infected by a customer, a woman infected by her husband and a child born with the disease. All were former patients who donated their bodies.

Thousands have died at the temple in just over a decade ? 172 in the first six months of this year ? and its founder believes the loneliness those patients endured is every bit as frightening as the corpses he has on display. ?It is the best medium to teach people. When they see the real thing, the death, they become more aware,? said Abbot Alongkot Tikkapanyo, who started the hospice after watching a man die of AIDS.

Today, the saffron-robed monk is on the front line of Asia?s struggle against the intolerance and ignorance faced by more than seven million people in the region living with HIV-AIDS. The hospice is refuge to hundreds of men and women who come here to die, shunned by family too fearful or too poor to offer care.

Bed-ridden and blinded by AIDS, 32-year-old Ekachai was brought to the temple by his mother four months ago. She has not visited since. ?I just want to go home,? he says, pulling a wool blanket tight around his body, shivering despite the 35-degree heat.

Visitors rare

Ekachai is one of 12 men in the ?final stage? ward, most of them days away from death. Nurses massage aching muscles and bandage open sores, listening to taped music. One of the more popular songs was written by the patients, ?Pieng Nhang Kamlang Jai? (Only Hope and Support). ?Patients come here every day and they die here every day,? said hospice worker Kongkiat Seweewunlop.

Families are a rare sight at the daily cremations handled by temple volunteers. Mainly Buddhist Thailand is hailed as a success story in the global fight against the disease. Unlike so many countries in Africa, it managed to diminish its infection rate with a widespread campaign to promote condoms in the 1990s ? largely among sex workers in the go-go bars of Bangkok and other cities.

But activists say the campaign has generated little sympathy for the one million Thais living with AIDS. A ?climate of fear? fuels the spread of the disease in Asia. Many Thais believe the disease ? which has killed about 400,000 and robbed the economy of up to $9 billion ? has been contained within the sex industry, affecting only prostitutes or needle drug users.

Alongkot wants to drive home the lesson that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is still infecting 20,000 Thais each year. ?I do this because I want to protect the Thai people from AIDS and educate them. I have been with patients and I know how they suffer,? he told Reuters. ?Second, I want patients to live normally within society. I want to see them live in their own houses, with their families, in their communities.?

Outside the museum, visitors see a row of sculptures made from the crushed bones of those who have died at the temple. Crafted by an artist whose brother has AIDS, the metre-long sculptures depict various modes of transmission, from a couple having sex to a mother with her child.

The project was a way to deal with the temple?s growing collection of bones. Hundreds of boxes with names and identity numbers are still stored in a meditation hall and 7,000 cream-coloured bags are kept outside near a Buddha image. ?We usually send the bones home to their families, but only 10 percent keep them. They are afraid the bones have AIDS,? said Kongkiat.

Human bones

The exhibit tends to upset visitors more than patients, he said, as two women on a tour crouched down for a better look. One reached out her hand, but pulled back at the last moment. ?Are they really made of bones? I?m scared to touch them. I might get something,? she said, quickly walking away.

Experts blame cultural and religious beliefs and a lack of education for the stigma linked to AIDS, preventing those with the disease from seeking treatment or counselling and testing services that are key to prevention. Asian leaders are also reluctant to face the issue publicly.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, speaking in Beijing early in November, noted the positive impact on social attitudes in Nigeria when its president hugged an AIDS patient on national television. But no top-level Chinese officials attended the speech where Clinton embraced a young man who announced he was infected. In Thailand, where AIDS funding has dropped since the 1997-98 Asian economic crisis, the prime minister had chaired the government?s AIDS committee since the early 1990s.

But incumbent Thaksin Shinawatra has delegated that duty to the health minister, who carries less political weight. ?Our leaders are not interested in solving the AIDS problem,? said Alongkot ?So we see AIDS patients have to face their misfortune by themselves?.

In the eight months since he arrived, 33-year-old Suthat has rarely left the temple grounds to go into town because of the open sores on his arms and legs. ?I can?t do anything with other people. When I go to the market for noodles, everyone looks at me like I?m an alien?. Save for his mother, the former university worker has been abandoned by his friends and relatives. ?They make it clear that I am hated by society. They don?t accept me.?

Statement by Bill Clinton

?Africa?s future at stake with AIDS?

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said yesterday that Africa?s future was threatened by the AIDS pandemic raging through the world?s poorest continent. ?Nothing less than the future of Africa is at stake,? Clinton wrote in an article published in South Africa?s Sunday Independent on the eve of World AIDS day on Monday. ?AIDS is causing incalculable damage to the health, economy and security of societies where the disease is allowed to run rampant,? he said. AIDS is blazing a trail of misery across Africa, robbing poor families of breadwinners and leaving millions of orphans in its wake. This has hit productivity, deepened poverty, pushed crime rates up and provided a ready supply of child soldiers for rag-tag rebel armies from Congo to Liberia. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region worst affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with an estimated 26.6 million people infected with the disease. South Africa has the world?s single highest number of people infected with HIV/AIDS ? some five million, or more than one out of every 10 South Africans.

Clinton welcomed South Africa?s new plan to begin a nationwide treatment programme using anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, calling it a ?milestone for a country that has one of the highest rates of infection?. ?President Thabo Mbeki and his government deserve a lot of credit for bringing this historic moment about,? Clinton wrote. This is rare praise for Mbeki?s handling of the AIDS crisis. Mbeki has been widely criticised for questioning the link between HIV and AIDS and officials resisted the use of ARV drugs, the only proven treatment for the disease. Mbeki?s government, faced with angry public protest ahead of general elections next year, finally agreed to bring ARV treatment to the public sector by gradually rolling out medication to the sickest while upping prevention efforts.

Darren Schuettler