This week marks the annual celebration of World Aids day, a somewhat poignant 'celebration', if the word is still applicable in this context, for we really have little to celebrate in the first place.

Indeed, one wonders what there is to celebrate about in Malaysia, for the statistics (the official ones at least) are appalling: 17 years after the first case of HIV was reported in Malaysia, the country now has 57,000 known HIV/Aids cases.(1) Unofficial estimates take the figure even higher, close to double the amount at around 100,000 cases and growing.

The nature of the disease and how it spreads made all the more difficult to detect thanks to Malaysian society's inability to deal with the matter openly means that the increase of the number of cases will most likely go up along a hyperbolic curve, rising increasingly fast as those unaware of being infected themselves pass the virus to unwitting partners.

As was pointed out by the president of the Malaysian Aids Council, Marina Mahathir, recently, one factor that stands in the way of containing the disease is Malaysian society's reluctance to deal with the problem at hand and discuss it frankly and openly.