Siriraj Hospital yesterday confirmed reports it had treated a patient diagnosed with the HIV sub-type C, which is common in Africa but never recorded in Thailand.

The hospital said people should not panic as this type of HIV strain was very similar to the one common in Thailand and the anti-retroviral drugs available here would be effective to save any people with this sub-type.

"It might have been the test results of a Ghanaian patient who is married to a Thai," said Dr Winai Ratanasuwan, an Associate Professor with Siriraj's Department of Preventive and Social Medicine.

"We need more time to check which patient it really was," he said.

To figure that out, the doctor said, the hospital had to trace back through the archive of its database because monitoring genetic changes of the disease was done on a random basis.

Other diseases being monitored by the hospital in collaboration with the Department of Disease Control at the Public Health Ministry include Sars and avian flu.

The Ghanaian man had received treatment at Siriraj about six months ago, said Winai, who presumed it was this man who had the strain.

While the hospital checks its records, it has recommended the Thai wife of the Ghanaian man to come and have an HIV test too.

Some newspapers reported that the case might have involved a Thai woman enticed to sell sex in Africa, because the rate of sub-type C HIV infection in Africa was as high as 20 to 25 per cent, he said.

"This species of the virus caus-es similar symptoms in infected patients as does the strain found in Thailand, so the same drugs should work on it too," he said.

The only distinction was the sub-type C virus was common in Africa, the doctor said.

But Winai said the emergence of HIV sub-type C in Thailand was expected to affect the HIV vaccine trial being conducted in Rayong, given the different sub-type used in developing that experimental vaccine.

The Rayong vaccine project, believed to be the world's largest final-phase HIV trial on humans, involves about 16,000 volunteers.

But it has used sub-type E, he said.

"So, we'd better treat it as an opportunity to raise public con-cerns about the importance of HIV/Aids prevention," Dr Winai said.

Arthit Khwankhom

The Nation