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In the hills of Thailand, 23 Buddhist monks are working around the clock to treat patients who are dying of AIDS. Twenty of these monks have contracted AIDS themselves in the process – but there isn’t anyone else but them to care for the sick.

Because of the great fear of contracting AIDS, and the stigma associated with the disease in Thailand, most of the patients are left to die on their own. There is one doctor on staff, so newly infected patients help those who are more sick.

“I’d rather suffer than see my parents lose face,” said Lek, a young woman living at the AIDS hospice. Lek contracted the disease while working as a sex worker to raise money for her son. Watching a caretaker sweep out bones from the crematorium, where an average of two bodies are cremated each day, she said she plans on dying alone.

She is one of 200 patients at the hospice and one of 670,000 people suffering from AIDS in Thailand.

Lek’s story, along with the stories of four other people suffering from AIDS around the world, are being featured in an HBO documentary, “Pandemic: Facing AIDS.”

The documentary – which chronicles people with AIDS in Thailand, Uganda, Russia, Brazil and India – aims to combine personal stories with a global perspective on AIDS, said Director Rory Kennedy.

“The global AIDS crisis could be overcome if enough people and resources were devoted to the task,” Kennedy announced to an auditorium filled with several hundred people Thursday. The event was a screening for the documentary at the Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard. The event attracted a diverse audience, which included doctors, researchers, AIDS activists and the media.

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush promised a five-year, $15 billion AIDS program to treat AIDS, which Kennedy says is encouraging. But she emphasized the need to focus on curbing widespread infection during the next 18 months.

Kennedy had a glimpse of the pandemic two years before making her documentary, when she joined a White House AIDS delegation to make a short film about people suffering from AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

In many parts of Africa, entire communities and villages have been decimated. With nearly every death, another child is orphaned. In Uganda, nearly two million children have been orphaned by AIDS so far.

In Uganda, where treatments and preventative measures are usually more scarce than food, it is difficult to control the problem.

For example, though testing for HIV costs $1.50 in Uganda, most people still cannot afford it.

In one section of the documentary, Kennedy took several couples in Uganda to get tested for AIDS – one couple came out positive.

“We have to make sure we don’t have more kids now,” said the infected woman as she nursed her newborn child.

Though she easily passes the virus to her child through her breast milk, she doesn’t have a choice. Formula is too expensive, and she doesn’t want her baby to starve.

Doctors want to reshift their focus to prevent mother-to-child transmission through nervirapine, a $2 treatment given to a mother during labor and a child after birth to prevent infection, said Jeff Safrit, senior program officer at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Foundation.

Researchers and doctors are also working on getting universal access to rapid testing for HIV and AIDS, something that wasn’t possible when the film was made.

“Only one in 20 people with HIV know their status,” said Mary Rotheram, the associate director of policy for the UCLA AIDS Institute.

Something as simple as knowing your status can make infection rates go down, Rotheram said, citing the lowered infection rates in Thailand and Uganda as examples. In these two countries, infection rates decreased when people became more knowledgeable about preventative measures and treatments.

“By focusing on expensive treatments, we miss possibilities of other solutions,” Rotheram said.

The five-part documentary debuts June 15 at 7 p.m. EST on HBO. It will continue with half-hour segments on subsequent Sundays at noon.