Their strong infrastructure and years of experience provide a basis for leadership. Workshops and health care training in Thailand would reduce cost. Cooperation between the Thai Ministry of Public Health, the Thai Department of Communicable Disease Control, the CDC and organizations such as Global Strategies for HIV Prevention, Call to Action, and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and pharmaceutical companies could result in establishing a South East Asia Training Resource. Additional resources might be made available from the Fogarty and various NIH institutions. Several of the hospitals in Thailand, as well as the CDC and Ministry of Public Health, have been engaged in training health care workers in the region.
Costs are modest.
Air fares within the region are reasonable. Most of the expertise for perinatal HIV prevention is available in Bangkok including obstetrics, pediatrics, VCT, management, data collection, epidemiology, surveillance, laboratory testing and quality control.