The report, released on Thursday, was based on interviews and surveys at 1,700 schools across the country over 18 months and was commissioned by the Education Labour Relations Council.

"Now fewer than 11 South African teachers died of HIV/AIDS complications every day last year," The Star said, adding that 80 percent of the deaths recorded were of teachers aged below 45. About 33 percent were aged between 24 and 35.

Olive Shisana, the head of the research unit, said: "There are 356,700 teachers in 26,700 schools countrywide and of the 1,700 we visited, 83 percent of teachers agreed to provide specimens of HIV testing."

The prevalence of HIV/AIDS among school teachers is the highest in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province at 21.8 percent, the study said.

South Africa has the highest HIV/AIDS caseload in the world, with 5.3 million people, or one in five adults, living with HIV and AIDS, according to UN figures.

President Thabo Mbeki, who attracted controversy some years ago for allegedly questioning the link between HIV and AIDS, recently declared in his state of the nation address that his government's plan to fight AIDS was "the best in the world."

The South African president last year said some 53,000 people would be receiving free anti-retroviral drugs by March but the number of people on the programme is way short of the target.

Shisana said 10,000 of the 45,000 HIV-positive teachers needed anti-retroviral treatment.

National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa Dave Balt conceded that the situation was grave.

"It is much higher than we expected and this needs to be changed. We can't afford to lose so many teachers. We also need to give moral support to teachers who are HIV-positive and provide them with medical assistance."

According to the study's conclusions, 70 percent of all new registered cases of HIV in the countries that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which includes all the former Soviet republic except the Baltic states, are linked to growing drug consumption.

In Ukraine, for example, 25 percent of AIDS infected people are teenagers and in Belarus 60 percent of all HIV-positive people are aged between 15 and 24, the report said.

Official figures say some 1.4 million people are registered HIV-positive in the CIS.

HANOI (AFP) - Vietnam will get a 35-million-dollar grant to support its fight against HIV/AIDS, the World Bank said.

The number of people infected with HIV/AIDS in Vietnam is still relatively low compared to other countries in the region, but it is spreading at an alarming rate, especially among young adults.

An estimated 245,000 people were living with HIV by the end of 2003, according to Vietnam's health ministry and international experts have warned the figure could hit one million by 2010.

The United Nations estimates Vietnam's HIV prevalence rate at 0.4 percent of the adult population -- far less than in regional neighbours Thailand and particularly Cambodia, where an estimated 2.6 percent were infected at the end of 2003.

But prevalence among Vietnam's high risk groups -- largely intravenous drug users and sex workers -- is rising and at a higher rate even than in India, Russia and China, according to US officials.

The government aims to raise awareness and change attitudes towards the epidemic among the general population and policymakers, the bank's statement said.

"Discrimination is hindering strategies to halt transmission of HIV," said Klaus Rohland, the bank's director in Vietnam.

"We will support the government's efforts to aggressively and carefully create behavioral changes through communication efforts to reduce this stigma."

More than 60 percent of Vietnam's reported HIV cases are attributed to people aged between 20 and 29, who are economically the most productive group.

If the epidemic continues to spread through them, the economic consequences will be serious, the bank noted.

The United States in June added Vietnam to a list of countries that can receive emergency US help to counter the pandemic -- the first in Asia to appear on the list.

"We believe that if Libya wants to choose a different course, and there are signs that it has been starting to choose that course, it has to deal with a problem like this with respect for human rights and justice," Zoellick said in Sofia.

"That strengthens its ability to deal with people who are caught in a tragedy that is unfair," he added.

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death last May for allegedly infecting 380 children with the HIV virus at a hospital in Benghazi in northern Libya.

The defendants, who have already spent six years in jail, all maintain their innocence.

Forty-seven children at the pediatric hospital have died of AIDS, but the court that condemned the health workers to death rejected testimony from Luc Montaignier, the French doctor who first isolated the HIV virus, and Swiss and Italian colleagues, that the epidemic was due to a lack of hygiene.

The court handling the appeal said Tuesday it would rule in two months' time.

The Bulgarian news agency BTA reported on Wednesday that Libya's supreme court had found lapses in the verdicts pronounced by the court at Benghazi on May 6, 2004, which have also been pointed out by the Bulgarian defence in the appeal of the death sentences.

Libya last year started coming in from the cold diplomatically when leader Moammer Kadhafi renounced weapons of mass destruction.

In September, Washington lifted most economic sanctions on Libya as part of a normalisation process and the European Union in October lifted its 18-year-old arms embargo on the country.

But both the EU and Washington have voiced continued concern over the death sentence hanging over the foreign health workers.

More than 48 percent were women aged 15 to 49.

And the illness has killed more than 41,000 people in Benin since 1985 when it first appeared in the country, the ministry said.

"This decision will permit a stabilisation in the state of health of people living with HIV-AIDS, bring back patients lost to treatment and create a keen interest within the population for voluntary testing campaigns," Cotonou-based immunology specialist Jean Luc Mintchedji told AFP.

The Media Development Authority (MDA) said Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lee Boon Yang supported its earlier decision to deny a permit for the Affect05 concert scheduled for Sunday, to protect public interest.

"The minister has carefully considered the appeal for the licence application for Affect05 and has decided to uphold the MDA's position that such performances that promote alternative lifestyles are against the public interest," MDA said in an e-mail to AFP.

Susan Tang, spokeswoman for the concert organiser Safehaven, said the group was disappointed with the rejection of their appeal.

The MDA said last week it turned down Safehaven's application for a permit after reviewing past performances of the main performers, a Los Angeles-based Christian gay couple named Jason and deMarco.

"Based on the duo's website and reports of their performances in the United States, it is assessed that their performance will promote a gay lifestyle which would be against the public interest," the MDA said at that time.

Safehaven, which lodged the appeal, has said the aim of the concert was to raise funds for HIV/AIDS sufferers in Singapore and promote awareness of the illness.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is an incurable condition which is passed on by having unprotected sex, among other causes. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

Singapore's gay and lesbian community has protested comments earlier this month by a senior health ministry official who said a sharp rise in new HIV infections could have been caused by an annual gay and lesbian party held in the city-state.

The annual Nation Party on Sentosa island is a key date in Asia's gay festival calendar.

A record 311 people in Singapore contracted HIV last year, 28 percent more than in 2003, Senior Minister of State for Health, Balaji Sadasivan said. He said 90 percent of the people who contracted the virus last year were men, a third of them gay.

There are now more than 2,000 HIV-infected or confirmed AIDS patients in Singapore, which has a population of about 4.2 million people including resident foreigners.

"We have millions of vulnerable people out there...both infected and affected crying out for help," says Prisca Munonyara, director of the Zimbabwean NGO AIDS Counselling Trust (ACT), set up 17 years ago to provide free counselling to the poor living with HIV and AIDS.

"They have come to depend on the NGOs for help and they are the people who suffer most as a result of the current state of affairs," says Munonyara, referring to the bill that has yet to be signed into law by Mugabe.

"There is an uncertainty in the NGO sector since the NGO bill. We have all been sitting on the fence and our funding partners overseas have adopted a similar stance," she says.

As Zimbabwe heads into key parliamentary elections on Thursday, the AIDS crisis is getting little attention here as the parties slug it out with attacks on each other and - in Mugabe's case - on British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai promised at a weekend rally to ensure that hospitals are able to treat people living with HIV and AIDS adding: "The youth especially must be careful and use condoms -- three, three -- if necessary, to stop the spread of AIDS."

Zimbabwe has the world's fourth highest AIDS rate, affecting one in four adults, trailing just behind Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho, according to UN AIDS.

But contrary to neighboring southern African countries, Zimbabwe is not attracting foreign aid on the same scale, mostly due to concerns from big western donors over the government's record on corruption and human rights.

According to the UN children's agency UNICEF, the average annual per capita donor spending on a person suffering from AIDS in southern Africa by the US government, the World Bank and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria is 74 dollars (55 euros).

But in Zimbabwe only four dollars is spent on average on a person living with HIV, the agency says.

Zambia, which has a lower AIDS rate than Zimbabwe, gets 187 dollars per HIV-infected person, UNICEF says.

Zimbabwe's Labour Minister Paul Mangwana said the bill was necessary to rein in NGOs that the government claims were being used by foreign governments and organisations as conduits to channel funds to the opposition.

If passed into law the bill will require NGOs to submit themselves to government scrutiny, present regular reports of their accounts and projects, and bar NGOs involved in governance issues from receiving foreign funding.

Jonah Mudehwe, director of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), the umbrella body of all NGOs, said the poor are suffering as international aid agencies have adopted a "wait and see" stance since the passing of the bill.

"Since the promulgation of the NGO bill the situation has been uncertain and unsettling," Mudehwe said.

"The poor communities that were benefiting from the services of NGOs do not get as much as they did," said Mudehwe.

The Zimbabwean government two weeks ago said it was investigating several NGOs it accused of abusing funds received from international donors in what critics said was an attempt to build a case against NGOs.

Mangwana said organisations found to have abused funds will be prosecuted and their activities banned in Zimbabwe.

Some 2.3 million Zimbabweans are living with HIV and AIDS, with some 2,500 dying every week from AIDS-related illnesses, according to government statistics.