The old man lay unattended in the shack which served as a morgue for the General Hospital in Mount Hagen, a busy town in the restive highlands of central Papua New Guinea.
The latest victim of an AIDS epidemic which threatens to overwhelm this troubled Pacific nation, the man had died a day earlier, but the fear and stigma attached to his disease meant no one in his family wanted to collect the body.
So it lay on a gurney, covered by a tattered blanket, outside the broken morgue refrigerator, a hospital worker coming from time to time to spray formaldehyde from a plastic bottle so the corpse wouldn't decompose before someone finally came to claim him.
PNG is on the brink of an AIDS crisis of southern African proportions and the government, hamstrung by corruption and mismanagement, has been slow to respond, according to local health workers and international aid officials.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that at least one in 100 Papua New Guineans are infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS.
Out of a population of 5.2 million, at least another 150 people are infected each month - an increase of 20 percent per year - and the spread shows no signs of easing, says Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the West Pacific.
"Our judgement is that given the current level of infection and the rate of increase ... it is possible that the number of infections could reach one million in 10 to 15 years unless decisive action is taken now," Omi told AFP.
Australian aid officials say the rate of increase of HIV could be as high as 40 percent per year, meaning the million mark could be hit within six years.
"We are looking at an African-style epidemic," said Yves Renault, the WHO representative in Port Moresby, the PNG capital.
As in sub-Saharan Africa, HIV/AIDS in PNG is spread primarily through heterosexual contact and fuelled by a culture of promiscuity, a high incidence of rape and a growing problem of prostitution in the major towns and cities.
But the potential for disaster is even greater in PNG given the complexity of the society - a tense patchwork of nearly 800 tribal groups, each speaking its own language and innately mistrustful of outsiders.
"There is no notion of nation or general community here, and that makes any prevention program more difficult," said Renault, a health veteran who spent 16 years with the WHO in Africa.
Papua New Guinea has been wracked by political instability and mismanagement since independence from Australia in 1975.
A wealth of oil, mineral and agriculture resources has failed to translate into funds for health, education and other public services amid widespread charges that generations of politicians have siphoned off available money for themselves and their tribal constituencies.
"There is a state of collapse of public service delivery at a level which is quite hard to imagine," says Hugh White, a former Australian government intelligence analyst and deputy director of the defence department who now leads an independent policy institute in Canberra.
Australia this month has begun a major law-and-order intervention to tackle rampant crime and poor governance, deploying 210 police and 64 civil servants with the aim of improving security and getting funds where they are needed.
But White says the radical initiative could be doomed if action is not taken to curb the HIV/AIDS crisis.
"Because of the weakness of the state, when PNG does face a crisis like HIV/AIDS it lacks the state mechanisms to respond effectively," he said.
If current HIV infection trends continue, White said, "it could be one of the things that push PNG from just being a state in long-term decline to being a state that's about to go over the edge.
"This is the kind of crisis that could just push it over the brink."
There are signs of hope, however, with the government recently setting up two parliamentary committees on the AIDS issue and a plan by the Global Fund against AIDS to provide 30 million US dollars over five years for treatment and prevention beginning next year.
Australia, the European Union, USAID and numerous non-governmental organisations are working actively with the National AIDS Council and other local groups to provide treatment to HIV patients and develop AIDS prevention programs.
But the task before them is monumental and the human cost of the disaster is heart-wrenching in a society where fear, shame and ignorance have made AIDS sufferers pariahs in their communities and their own homes.
Rachel Pokesy of the National AIDS Council tells of HIV-infected people being buried alive or left in the bush to die by family fearful of catching "the sick" or angered at the shame they think has been brought into their home. "The stigma is very high, we have many people forced to sleep under their houses or in the street because the family is afraid," she said.
John, a 38-year-old teacher from the highlands, lost his wife to AIDS and then tested positive for HIV early this year.
Fearful of the reaction from family and neighbours, John left his five children with relatives and came to a privately-run half-way house in Port Moresby called Three Angels.
"I only told my first-born son about it, and I told him 'You keep this in your heart', the others must not know," John recounted on the porch of Three Angels.
John didn't even share the secret with his second wife, Maggie, a former pupil, at least at first.
Now the 24-year-old sits beside him at Three Angels. She tested positive for HIV two months ago, and is pregnant with their first child.
Susan sits on the floor nearby, her emaciated legs and arms akimbo as she listens to the conversation.
The 24-year-old lost her husband to AIDS a year ago and has been in and out of hospital and half-way houses for months. "I went out to her place and found her living under the house, her family was refusing to feed her or let her in," said Pokesy.
"She had been doing very well, was very healthy, but when you're on anti-retroviral drugs you need to eat and she couldn't," she said.
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