The authorities in Burma are risking lives and increasing the dangers of the HIV epidemic in the country by preventing foreign aid organisations from giving crucial help to patients suffering from Aids, The Times has learnt.

The ban is part of a growing hostility towards international organisations since the mass demonstrations by monks and political activists that were suppressed violently by the junta last September.

The Government has prevented aid workers and diplomats from visiting certain projects, made it difficult for them to secure visas and expelled the head of the United Nations in Burma for drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe facing the country.

An HIV/Aids project run by the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) on behalf of its detained leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been devastated by the arrest of its leaders and organisers.

Last October, police arrested the monks of the Maggin monastery in the former capital, Rangoon, which acted as an hospice for Aids patients. The patients were transferred under guard to a government hospital where they were treated with suspicion, according to Aids activists. At least two of them died soon afterwards and their deaths were accelerated, their supporters claim, by the callous treatment that they received.

In the latest move, projects being run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Mandalay, including the British charities Save the Children and Marie Stopes International, have been suspended. A constitutional referendum is due to be held in May and local authorities suspect foreign organisations of issuing propaganda on behalf of the NLD - an accusation that they deny vehemently.

Foreign NGOs in Mandalay have been banned from taking part in work that takes them outside their local offices, a ruling that hinders “outreach” programmes such as those that promote safe sex and the use of clean needles among drug users.

Worse, they are also unable to deliver much-needed food to thousands of Aids patients. Local authorities have offered to allow the deliveries to resume if the NGOs provide the names and addresses of patients, but aid workers refuse to comply. “If this continues, these people will not get food,” Andrew Kirkwood, programme director for Save the Children in Burma, said. “We're talking about thousands of people, not hundreds.”

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Burma receives international aid worth $2.88 (£1.44) per person per year, the least of the poorest 50 nations. Britain and the EU have promised to increase aid, but the United States has been reluctant, saying that it indirectly helps the junta.

[]“People are suffering because the Government is not doing enough but the international community is also letting them down,” Mr Kirkwood said.

According to official statistics, 0.7 per cent of the population are HIV-positive, down from 1 per cent at the beginning of the decade. However, Burmese doctors say that the problem is getting worse, not better, and that the Government is manipulating the statistics.

One doctor in Mandalay tells of the Sitaku hospital, a Buddhist monastic institution in the city that carries out HIV tests on patients who are about to undergo surgery. Seven per cent of such people were found to be HIV-positive. The doctor says that the figure was suppressed by the Government because it was regarded as shameful.

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