Just for the record. Eating pineapples does not cause AIDS. And the story is a myth.

[him] moderator

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On Nargis Libraries, Bankruptcy, Jobs and AIDS
Myanmar Book AIDS
30 June 2009

Captain Myo Myint Aung collected $1400S from fellow mariners for our project this January, here is his response to our blog today. Life has not been gentle in Singapore, or Myanmar—

June 30, 2009—Sorry for a long pause. Fully agreed with your comment. Knowledge is important and propagation of knowledge is more important. Libraries can bring knowledge beyond schools.

I have been busy these days but I read every email you send and forward to my circle of friends. Times are tough for everyone here, Just a week ago, one of the ship management companies went bankrupt. Some 2000 Burmese officers and crew working on their ships face unpaid wages and loss of jobs. Friends at management level in the Singapore office risk losing their jobs, even with the recent slight economic recovery….international trading is slow, as is shipping.

I hope Obama and his team’s stimulus package takes effect soon so we get out of this difficult time. The Singapore government says that unless US and EU economies gain momentum, we have no chance of early economic recovery in export-oriented countries like Singapore. And right now, we are in the middle of an H1N1 scare. No one has died from H1N1 in Singapore but we have over 500 positive cases and the number increases daily. I am also down with flu - but thank God it is not H1N1 , just seasonal viral flu.

Thanks again for your great work and your team- from Myanmar and abroad–especially in the US.
I will do my best to help this great work..from time to time, as I can. Brgds/Myo
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From: myo myint aung
Sent: Tuesday, 23 June 2009 4:58:30
AIDs from Fruit stall @ Waterloo Street, Singapore

Never knew the spread of AIDS is so powerful. Now better not buy ‘already cut’ fruits. Cut your own fruit and be safe! A 10 year old boy ate pineapple about 15 days back, and fell sick the day he ate it. When he had his health checked… doctors diagnosed that he had AIDS. His parents couldn’t believe it… Then the entire family went under a checkup…. none of them suffered from AIDs. So the doctors checked again with the boy, asking if he had eaten out…The boy said ‘yes’. He had pineapple before the evening he became ill. Immediately a team from the hospital went to the pineapple vendor to check. They found the seller had cut his finger while cutting the pineapple; his blood had spread into the fruit. When they had his blood checked….the guy was suffering from AIDS. But he was NOT aware; unfortunately the boy now suffers from it.
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When I first learnt about HIV and AIDS it was early 1983 from TIME magazine. It had a cover photo of a test tube filled with blood. I was Acting 3rd Mate on Yick Fung Shipping -with all Hong Kong Chinese officers & crew . A young Hong Kong Captain was the only one on board who could read, speak & write good English. He taught me navigation and seamanship and gave me English magazines he read.That is how I got to know about HIV and AIDS -just a few months before going back to YGN for the 2nd Mate exam in 1983.

Few in Burma knew about AIDS at that time, except for my wife’s uncle, Dr U Khin Maung Tin, who was Director General & head of the government medical research lab in YGN. We talked about AIDS and he asked if Burmese seaman aware of it and whether they should educate to warn seamen?

I told him very few Burmese seamen were aware of it, but in many ports-Malaysia, Singapore and Australia -port health officials were visiting ships and passing out AIDS health guides and putting posters on ship notice board. I said we need to tell Burmese seamen about potential danger of this deadly but slow-developing threat. Later, he said he had requested the BSPP Cabinet to make this problem known to the public, but they turned down his request -saying that AIDS is disease of GAYs and drug addicts, not to worry about the general population. The Health Minister in question, Col Kyi Maung, was serving under General Ne Win.

Within a year the first Burmese HIV positive patient appeared. Sadly, it turned out to be a seaman who was neither gay nor a drug addict, just a working seaman a long time away from home and family. Now Burma has nearly a million (official report is 1/10 of that figure) HIV cases. They include people from all works of life - including military personnel, even air force pilots and naval officers. They all lost their jobs!

How many young children are HIV infected in YGN alone? Go see them at the Shwegondaine Orphanage and see, where my wife Maw assisted as an NGO volunteer there along with French, German, Japanese and Brazilian ladies from our expat community in YGN. I followed her and saw poor little HIV-infected kids abandoned by their HIV parents. They wanted to hug us…to have warm human touch because no one in that orphanage touched them. But only European ladies were hugging them, whereas we Asians were careful not to touch them or let them hug us, except to touch our clothes. They had no direct skin contact, even though we knew HIV was not transmitted by touching, it was really a heart breaking sight. I couldn’t follow Maw any more, whereas my own daughter, about the same age as those kids, often went along to play with them.

INDIA has an HIV population larger than all of Africa; thanks to long-haul truck drivers and cross-border trade, the virus has spread rapidly from India through northern Burma into China and vice versa. Our virus even has mutated into a new strings not known before. The number of HIV-infected people entering and exploiting our innocent and unaware people has rapidly expanded our HIV-positive population.

The BSPP is long gone…and so is their conservative approach to public health and HIV; now big billboards warn people about HIV and AIDS in most road intersections. But do you ever really look at them when driving? Even with our basic knowledge of AIDS- we have difficulty understanding those billboard signs. A few years ago a girl working in our house asked my wife about HIV:-”Aunty - how big is that HIV bug?”
Is Burma doing enough to reach out 55 millions people? Yes, libraries can help a lot. Thank you for this project.

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<strong>Dear Myo, Another reason for good local libraries in Myanmar, where ordinary people can learn how to avoid AIDS. Thanks for this message and for your donation. We are assembling books today for our third container to be shipped early August–50,000 more. American President Lines is donating cargo space between Seattle and Yangon for six containers over the coming 12 months. 300,000 books, some to be sold to pay for Burmese texts, delta libraries greatest need. John

http://www.myanmarbookaid.org/2009/06/on-nargis-libraries-bankruptcy-jobs-and-aids/