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HIV prevalence among gay and bisexual men in Bangkok rose to 30.7 percent in 2007 from 17.3 percent in 2003. In Jakarta, it increased to 8.1 percent from 2 percent within the same period.

Some countries in Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia and those in South Asia still have in place anti-sodomy laws, which are formidable barriers to people getting treatment and help, and they frustrate efforts at disease prevention, experts said.

"A young (gay) man went to a clinic for treatment and was slapped by a doctor and scolded for being a bad person. The doctor refused to treat him and he was thrown out," said Shivananda Khan of the help group Naz Foundation International.

"It is not uncommon, it happens in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar," Khan told Reuters.

while planning to be a psychologist, I kind of intended to do glbtq counseling.  then, as a social work major, I wanted to work with immigrants in particular, but possibly also queers.  then I discovered the idea of epidemology and public health and related fields, and decided that gay men's health makes perfect sense and that I could work in prevention.  now I'm doing nursing, and when I asked what area of specialization was most useful for nurses who wanted to do volunteer work abroad, tropical diseases and HIV were listed as major.  I want to do HIV/AIDS nursing.  and I want to do it in India long enough to get a real sense of the culture, not to mention make a real difference.  it makes complete sense because it's pretty much everything I'm passionate about or interested in combined, with the possible exception of ecology...it would also be a completely perfect lead-in to an anthropology career, which would let me transition smoothly into academics if/when I decided I didn't want to do nursing anymore.

if I could do it in Bangalore it would be amazing...if I could get Quaker congregations in the US to partner with Lingayat groups in Karnataka, it would be fucking fantastic.  I received a polite, rather vague reply from a lingayat group based in Bangalore I emailed once, asking about gay rights.  his basic response was that Lingayats have pushed the envelope on human rights since the middle ages, marrying princesses to untouchables and letting women lead on a very regular basis, but that they haven't really talked much about gay people, despite the fact they really don't have anything against them...officially having nothing against anyone.  It actually sounds rather like the position the Quakers were in last century, with a fantastic human rights record that hadn't let extended to the queer community simply because of a lack of awareness.  Lingayats also already have a strong infrastructure with lots of connections in social work and public health things in India.  hmmmmm.  this could be very cool.  I should probably review for anatomy now, though.