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Thailand did everything right to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids in the 1990s - combining massive preventive measures with the treatment of people already infected with the deadly virus. Through effective public awareness campaigns to promote safe sex, the country was able to reduce visits to commercial sex workers by half, dramatically increase condom use and slash new HIV infections. Thailand was held up as a shining example for developing countries around the world. The country provided a lesson in how a well-designed government policy could galvanise all members of society to participate in the fight against HIV/Aids, and result in an outstanding success.

The anti-HIV/Aids programme got off to a good start because the government at the time made the wise decision at an early stage to ditch official secrecy and concealment in favour of a policy of openness and truthful reporting on HIV incidence and close monitoring of HIV/Aids sufferers. These effective measures were augmented by efforts to combat discrimination.

However, in the past several years HIV/Aids experts and campaigners have warned Thailand against resting on its laurels, pointing out that past successes do not guarantee that the country will continue to turn out good results.

For too long, such warnings have apparently fallen on deaf ears, possibly because health workers have been too busy dealing with the increasing number of people with HIV/Aids who require medical attention. Public education campaigns focusing on prevention, which used to be the main thrust of the country's battle against the virus, have increasingly given way to the treatment side of the situation.

More and more government funds previously earmarked for prevention have been diverted to cover costly treatments with anti-retroviral drugs, which have been available at state-run hospitals countrywide since 2001. As a result of money earmarked for public awareness campaigns getting slashed, a whole new generation of young people who became sexually active in recent years is lacking firm knowledge about how to practise safe sex. HIV/Aids transmission rates among teenagers have risen significantly.

Lack of political will on the part of successive governments and a complacent public are key factors threatening to plunge Thailand back into a potentially catastrophic HIV/Aids trap. The country has lost precious time that could have been spent providing much-needed sex education to young people. Instead of promoting the use of condoms, the authorities have reverted to a prudish approach by attempting to undertake the impossible task of controlling the sexual behaviour of the young by promoting abstinence.

Meechai Viravaidya, Thailand's most famous advocate of condom use and someone who has played an important role in the anti-HIV/Aids campaign, lamented that the use of condoms in the country had fallen to less than 20 per cent from its peak of about 90 per cent five years ago.

 Young people tend to have the wrong notion that the scourge of HIV/Aids only affected people belonging to previous generations, homosexual men or people who visit prostitutes - and that the virus is much less prevalent among the latter generation or younger people. Many youths have the mistaken idea that they can base their decision on whether to practise safe sex by using condoms on the overall health or social and economic background of their sex partners. Such mistakes can prove fatal.

The Public Health Ministry's Disease Control Department admitted that 75 per cent of the government's Aids control budget was allocated for treatment, leaving only 25 per cent of the money available for prevention, which may shrink further.

HIV/Aids campaigners should not just sit on their hands and complain about the lack of funds to do their job properly. Instead of relying solely on the government for funding, they should rebuild the collaboration between the public- and private-sector collaboration that used to work so well in the past.

Waiting for Thailand's HIV/Aids problem to deteriorate further into a crisis before taking the necessary corrective measures is not an option. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Thailand must wake up from its complacency before it is too late.