FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Many Buddhist temples are tourist attractions in Thailand. But this one, tucked away in the hills north of Bangkok is unusual. It was built a decade ago not as a traditional place of worship but as a hospice. A place where AIDS patients come to die with dignity.There are about 300 beds here, a fraction of the demand. But there seems no limit to the number of tourists who come through to meet and take pictures near AIDS patients -- to view the stark crematory and bone room, where the bones and ashes of thousands of patients lie in piles, and the after-death room, a macabre display that more befits a pathology museum.
In fact tourist donations sustain this facility, not government funds. And the founding monk says it helps sensitize adults to the AIDS problem. Even school kids arrive daily by the busload.Abbot PHRA ALONGKOT DIKKAPANYO (Wat Prabt Nam Phu Monastery): Our people -- if they can see by themself, not only listen or look at the picture, they can understand easily, and it is a good way of education in our country.
DE SAM LAZARO: Thailand has long been in the vanguard in tackling AIDS. It was the first Asian country to suffer an epidemic, stemming from another enduring tourist attraction: the commercial sex trade, which caters both to Thai and foreign tourists.
When AIDS hit in the early 90s, Thailand had a quick response. Not so much with money or health services, but with its already highly successful family planning program, it had popularized one of the most effective weapons in AIDS prevention: the condom. The program was headed by Mechai Viravaidya, politician from a prominent Thai family; economist by training but best known as the condom king.MECHAI VIRAVAIDYA (Head, Population and Development Authority): Look, it's just from a rubber tree like a tennis ball. If you're embarrassed by a condom you must be more embarrassed by a tennis ball. There's more rubber in it. We gave them out all over, and said, "Look the condom is clean if your mind is not dirty, so please take one."
DE SAM LAZARO: Early on, Viravaidya took his case to monasteries and monks because surveys showed they were the most influential people, particularly in rural areas of this predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million. The monks were supportive.
Mr. VIRAVAIDYA: And in the Buddhist scriptures it said many births cause suffering, so Buddhism is not against family planning. And we even ended up with monks sprinkling holy water on pills and condoms for the sanctity of the family, before shipments went out into the villages.DE SAM LAZARO: The condom and AIDS information campaign is widely credited with a dramatic drop in the number of HIV infections, from about 140,000 a year in 1990 to about 30,000, ten years later.
Fewer Thai men visit brothels and 90 percent of those who do now use condoms.
But hit hard by the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s, Thailand cut back funds to its AIDS campaign. That's blamed for an increase in infections among certain populations, including young pregnant women. Viravaidya says the message just isn't getting through to them effectively.
PHRA CHOOCHART (AIDS Patient): I kept the secret for many years, but finally something happen in my skin, it began to appear. I cannot keep secrets anymore. So I became a monk, because in society, if you catch HIV, nobody want you, also your family.
Dr. CHRIS LACK (Hospice Volunteer): Right, so these are the coffins that every day when patients die they're loaded into one of these and then the next morning they're taken in a truck out here and off to the crematorium. There are seven, seven ovens in the crematorium. So, apparently when they were building it they built it with the belief that, you know, I might just go over and check if this guy's alright. He's still alive, still alive. He will probably die tonight. He's held on for a couple days now when he didn't seem like he would, but he's pretty much ... all that moves now are his eyes and even his eyes only sometimes move. So, he's very much in the last stage. 
Abbot DIKKAPANYO: I've tried to give knowledge for our people for long time, ten years. And nowaday they can visit the patients, they like to learn, they like to visit but they cannot touch the patient. Maybe in five or ten year in the future. Our hospice is like a school: it gives knowledge. People can come here and learn how to look after the patient in their family. 
And Thailand will soon make available at just one dollar a day anti-retroviral drugs. These expensive drugs, now common in the West, should extend the life expectancy of patients like these. But just as important is the task of preventing new infections.
