"The police are role models for the youth in many communities," Ranjan Dwivedi of the Joint U.N. Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) in India told a discussion here at the 8th International Congress on AIDS in the Asia and Pacific (ICAAP). "Their daily work brings them in contact with some of the key populations that are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS including sex workers, men having sex with men, and injecting drug users."

In Thailand, the armed forces takes an active part in initial threat assessment and policy development, development of surveillance systems and intervention models, care of people living with HIV and AIDS, collaboration with domestic and international partners and so on, according to Maj Gen Suebpong Sangkharomya of the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences.

In China, more than 300 police officers in south-western Yunnan province were trained to conduct training on HIV prevention, said Professor Yang Lijun of the Yunnan provincial police academy.

In 1999, Cambodia's Ministry of Interior joined forces with the Family Health International (FHI), a non-profit organisation based in the United States, to reduce the spread of HIV among police personnel and their partners.

"To date, 1,033 commanders have been trained and 45,400 got information on HIV and AIDS from peer educators," said Hy Somoth, chief of the HIV and AIDS office of the Ministry of Interior.

Two years ago, the Ministry of National Defence and FHI in Cambodia launched the first ever alcohol reduction campaign among military personnel in order to reduce the HIV and AIDS vulnerabilities of military personnel across the country.

Prior to the campaign, the FHI supported a research study called 'Strong Fighting', which looked at the sexual behaviour of uniformed services personnel.

The study found that, of the 135 respondents, only two men declined to join friends in regular drinking sessions. The study also revealed that 63 percent of respondents admitted to becoming drunk during these sessions, while some admitted to drinking until they lost consciousness. Seventy-five percent, meanwhile, said they availed the services of sex workers after the drinking sessions and that they seldom used condoms.

"We drink until we get drunk, fall down and the dog lick our drunken mouths. Every time I drink alcohol, I want sex immediately. When we are drunk and we do not have sex, we feel very uncomfortable. When we get drunk, we do not think carefully. We do not use condoms," a respondent was quoted as saying.

In Cambodia, excessive drinking is a common pastime among men and therefore, has no major negative connotations in society.

The military and the police were selected as groups for the HIV prevalence research because FHI noted the high-risk sexual behaviour common to these uniformed men.

The research also showed that HIV prevalence among the uniformed personnel is increasing each year.

The uniformed men were first included in the sentinel groups in 1992, when they recorded zero prevalence figures. In 1995, HIV prevalence among the police peaked at 8 percent, while the military registered 5.9 percent. Infection rates for the latter came up to 7.1 percent in 1997.

Due to a reorganisation within their ranks the following year, the military were taken out of the sentinel groups in Cambodia. From 1998 onwards, only police personnel have been tested, because researchers assume that the military's risk behaviour and prevalence rate would be similar to those of the police.

Since 1998, HIV prevalence rates among policemen showed a steady increase. National figures in 2002 show the HIV prev