The free market economy in Vietnam first began in 1985 at a time when SIDA was associated with the buying of clothes of dead people. Why the name persists is beyond me and the people whom I query. But some Vietnamese farmers, especially bored young men, get a quick and intense high from injecting heroin and sharing needles lowers the individual's cost. HIV among users is now extremely high. And thus, men bring the virus home to their wives and sex partners.
Human flesh is cheap in any area of extreme poverty.
Cambodia can now boast it has the highest per capita growth rate of HIV in South Asia an amazing statistic not dreamed of five years ago when HIV was becoming more noticeable to government doctors. Just as Thailand's epidemic spilled across its border into Cambodia with returning sex workers from Bangkok and drug traffic from the Golden Triangle, HIV is pouring now into An Giang province and spreading throughout the southern regions. Once girls have lost their youthful beauty and sex appeal, they are sent back to their families in Vietnam. And thus, women bring the virus home to their husbands and oftentimes, their babies. I am running into stories like this every day now.