Among men aged 40-49, the proportion infected with HIV hit 3.9 percent in Manhattan, according to the study by the New York Health Department.

David Nash, who headed the research project, said that while "New York City comprises three percent of the US population, it accounts for over 15 percent of the nation's AIDS cases and 18 percent of HIV-related deaths in 2001."

The potentially lethal disease continues to affect blacks and Hispanics significantly more than whites: The risk factor is five times greater among black New Yorkers and 2.5 times greater among Hispanic New Yorkers.

And almost one-third of all HIV/AIDS cases in New York are detected in the advanced stages of the disease, reducing the chances of survival, said Nash.

Another study conducted at the University of North Carolina indicated that high-risk sexual habits prevailed among black homosexuals.

"This is a wake-up call. The HIV is still being transmitted," said Lisa Hightow, who took part in the study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between January 1, 2001 and March 1, 2003.

It showed that unprotected anal sex was practiced by 25 percent to 40 percent of students participating in the study, whose average age was 22.

And during the two years in which the study was conducted, 423 new AIDS cases were reported among men in all of North Carolina -- 13 percent were students, 88 percent were blacks and 91 percent were homosexuals.

Researchers at the Atlanta, Georgia-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also focused on possible HIV transmission between the homosexual and heterosexual populations.

CDC expert Greg Millett studied a group of poor black men who described themselves as heterosexuals but who regularly had sexual contact with other men. He concluded that this group could contribute to homosexual-to-heterosexual HIV transmission.

Another study found that 70 percent of all HIV/AIDS-infected people in the United States went to prison at some point in their lives. The study, however, questions the theory that AIDS transmission is running rampant in the prison system.

Some two million people are behind bars, and 10 million people are imprisoned temporarily each year in the United States, which is home to some 292 million people.

The studies were presented here during the 11th-annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, attended by some 4,000 experts Sunday through Wednesday.

"Not only are they the ones disproportionately affected but they're also the hardest to reach," said Holly Baddour, executive director the Chatham Social Health Council, the nonprofit where Aguilar works.

Over the next three years, the council — which had three employees and a budget of $76,000 last year — will receive $150,000 from drug maker Pfizer Inc., part of $3 million the company is spending to combat AIDS in nine Southern states.

Baddour said the money will help pay for programs tailored to blacks and Hispanics. The council also plans to hire a part-time worker to help Aguilar keep up as Hispanics continue to pour into Chatham County, about 50 miles west of Raleigh.

The county's Hispanic population increased eightfold between 1990 and 2000, with many new arrivals settling in Siler City, where they butcher chickens, knit clothes and pour plastics for money to mail back to their families.

About half of the new arrivals come from Mexico and about a tenth of the county's 50,000 residents are of Hispanic origin, giving Chatham one of the most concentrated populations of Spanish speakers in North Carolina.

Chatham ranks low in AIDS cases, with an average of four a year reported between 2000 and 2002, a rate a little more than half that of the nation. But Aguilar notes that Hispanics are three times more likely than whites to contract the disease.

"The rapid growth of the Latino community in Chatham County may imply that in the near future, the HIV/AIDS numbers may increase rapidly," said Scott Rhodes, chairman of the council's board and a public health professor at Wake Forest University. "We must act now to prevent higher infection rates down the road."

Money to fight the spread of the disease in the region hasn't kept up with the pace of the epidemic, said Dr. Robert Janssen, director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at CDC. Organizations established in the West and Northeast to fight AIDS in its early years still receive the most financial help, he said.

The Chatham Social Health Council relies on ingenuity to overcome its lack of money.

Adolfo Aguilar walks toward a chicken processing plant and heads turn skeptically. Few people are willing to acknowledge the bald guy with the goatee, blue sneakers and sack full of condoms.

But soon, factory workers quietly pull Aguilar aside for whispered words in Spanish and handfuls of the mint, chocolate and cola-flavored condoms.

"Everybody knows the guy who brings the condoms," Aguilar says with a grin.

His lighthearted style masks a serious mission. Each month, he distributes about 4,000 condoms in factories, pawn shops and pool halls where Spanish speakers hang out.

Linda Ferguson is Aguilar's counterpart among the blacks who make up 17 percent of the county's population. She spends her days recruiting ministers, barbers and beauticians to her cause.

"That's the town hall for us," she said. "If you want to know what's going on in the African-American community with us there are two key places: the church and the barber shop."

Ferguson said both blacks and Hispanics tend to stay quiet about sexual issues, and there's little discussion of AIDS, which many still consider a gay disease. Ferguson and Aguilar are trying to change that by speaking frankly.

Aguilar, a naturalized U.S. citizen who grew up in Mexico, said his goal is to help other Hispanics.

"Now I have the opportunity to bring everything I didn't have when I came to this country to the less fortunate," Aguilar said. "If you save the life of one person, that's the most beautiful thing you can do."

By DANIEL Q. HANEY, AP Medical Editor

SAN FRANCISCO - A sudden, surprising increase in HIV infections has been discovered among male black college students in North Carolina, and officials fear the same is probably happening across the South.

The upsurge is driven by young men having risky sexual encounters with other men. Typically they do not consider themselves to be gay or bisexual and may even have girlfriends, as well.

"It's a public health emergency. I don't know any other way to put it," said Dr. Peter Leone, HIV medical director at the state Health Department.

The increase was first noticed in late 2002, and officials now believe in began in mid-2001 and is still continuing.

The high rate of AIDS infection among U.S. blacks has been one of the most striking difficulties of AIDS prevention.

Blacks are 11 times more likely than white Americans to get AIDS. Even though they make up 12 percent of the population, they account for 39 percent of AIDS cases and 54 percent of new HIV infections.

Among black men, like whites, the leading cause of infection is sex with other men. Experts have long lamented the high rate of risky sex among gay black men. Poverty is often listed as a strong contributor, so the new findings among relatively well-off college students were unexpected.

"We are very concerned about it," said Dr. Ron Valdiserri, deputy HIV chief at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Most Americans would not think about college students as a high-risk group."

Indeed, a CDC study on 10 campuses in the 1990s found a very low infection rate.

The North Carolina data were presented Tuesday in San Francisco at the 11th Annual Retrovirus Conference.

Also at the conference, officials presented newly gathered data on HIV infections in New York City. Overall, 1 percent of the city's population carries the virus, including 4 percent of men in their 40s.

Nationwide, an estimated 900,000 people have HIV. The CDC says that in recent years infections have risen somewhat among gay men of all races and fallen slightly among women.

The North Carolina researchers found 84 newly infected male college students over the past three years, 73 of them black. Only one black student admitted using injected drugs, and just two said they had sex only with women. The rest apparently were infected through sex with men.

"The concern is this is our best and brightest within the minority population who are coming down with a lifelong and potentially lethal infection," Leone said.

The researchers said they suspect a similar upsurge may be occurring among black male college students across the South.

"We have no reason to think this is limited to North Carolina," said the CDC's Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick.

Leone said HIV appears to have been recently introduced among black college students. People are much more likely than usual to pass on the virus through sex during their first weeks of infection, and this might explain why so many students have caught it.

When the students were questioned, three-quarters said they thought they were not at high risk of HIV, despite frequent anal intercourse without condoms with different male partners.

"Part of it is message fatigue," Leone said. "They've grown up hearing this thing. It's old stuff to them. They just ignore it."

Another possible factor may be an especially intense stigma against HIV and homosexuality in the South, making the students less likely to discuss their sexual identity or consider themselves gay.

"We have a very marginalized group," he said. "They don't identify with the messages targeted to gay white men."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE: Medical Editor Daniel Q. Haney is a special correspondent for The Associated Press.

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is proposing to double spending on sexual abstinence programs that bar any discussion of birth control or condoms to prevent pregnancy or AIDS despite a lack of evidence that such programs work.

A study by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on declining birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers concludes that prevention programs should emphasize abstinence and contraception.

"Both are important," said Dr. John Santelli, the lead author of the study, which has not been published.

In Minnesota, a study found that sexual activity doubled among junior high school students taking part in an abstinence-only program. The independent study, commissioned by the state's health department, recommended broadening the program to include more information about contraception.

Independent researchers who are studying abstinence-only programs for the federal government said in their first report two years ago that no reliable evidence exists whether the programs work. They are expected to issue an update soon.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush said, "We will double federal funding for abstinence programs, so schools can teach this fact of life: Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases."

Bush would spend $270 million on abstinence-only education, compared with $100 million annually when he took office.

The president also would move the programs into the same agency within the Health and Human Services Department that oversees religious-based programs and the president's proposal to promote marriage.

Advocates of comprehensive sex education said the shift, coupled with the additional money, is part of Bush's election-year appeal to conservatives.

They said the administration's proposal flies in the face of research that credits both abstinence and contraception with reducing the teenage birth rate by 30 percent in the past decade to historic lows.

"This is money, hundreds of millions of dollars that we could better spend on children and people who need the help," Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., told HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson at a hearing on the president's budget proposal.

James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a group that promotes education about birth control and condom use, said abstinence-only programs deprive teenagers of information about the effectiveness of condoms in stopping the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. "These programs have really evolved into anti-condom programs," Wagoner said.

Yet supporters of the abstinence programs said teens should be hearing more about refraining from sex.

"Kids in society are saturated with information about contraception and messages about encouraging casual, permissive sex," said Robert Rector, who helped write the administration's abstinence education program.

Rector discounted the Minnesota study as unscientific and said the CDC research does not give enough credit to abstinence.

The comprehensive sex education promoted by Advocates for Youth and other groups focuses on safe sex, not abstinence, said Rector, a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank. Wagoner rejected the assertion and pointed to his group's Web site, which praises abstinence.

"Abstinence is the only 100 percent effective method for avoiding unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV," the site says.

LONDON (Reuters) - Increases in unsafe sex have pushed HIV infection rates in Britain to what are expected to be their highest ever, a government agency said on Thursday.

New HIV infections jumped 20 percent between 2002 and 2003 and are expected to rise to over 7,000, the highest-ever yearly total, it reported.

"The year-on-year increase we are observing...is a cause of considerable concern," said Dr Barry Evans of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) which monitors infectious diseases.

New diagnoses among gay men are expected to rise to more than 2,000 when all the reports are in and will be the highest in any year since testing became available in the late 1980s.

"Increases in unsafe sex are undoubtedly the main driving force behind this epidemic," Evans added.

The agency also reported a 27 percent increase in HIV infections among heterosexuals, but added that 80 percent of the cases were infected in countries with a high prevalence of HIV.

Evans said heterosexual infections within Britain are also rising.

"HIV is an infection that is here to stay," he said in a statement. "With almost a third of the 49,500 people currently living with HIV in the UK still unaware they are infected, the rising trend in new diagnoses is liable to get worse before it gets better."

The Terrence Higgins Trust, an advocacy group, urged the government to make HIV a national priority and to develop a sexual health strategy.

"Modernizing sexual health services to make it easier for people to test for HIV and other STIs (sexually transmitted infections) would be a major step forward in helping to tackle this crisis," said Nick Partridge, chief executive of the trust.

"We must also make a concerted and focused effort to educate young people about the risks of unprotected sex," he added.

The HPA believes the rise in HIV cases is related to other STIs and to more people being tested for the virus that causes AIDS.

"Changing people's sexual behavior so they use a condom with all new and casual partners is one of the most effective ways of reversing the trend. People must be encouraged to take responsibility for their own sexual health," Evans added.

Luo Feng, deputy director of the National Narcotics Control Commission, pinpointed Afghanistan, with an annual opium output exceeding 3,600 tons, as "a major potential problem for China".

Afghanistan is the world's biggest producer of opium, used to make heroin, and the number of poppy fields spread around the country during 2003.

Luo, also vice minister of public security, was cited by the Xinhua news agency as saying new types of narcotics were also creeping across the country.

The notorious Golden Triangle, an area along the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, has seen production flourish and remained the biggest drugs source into China last year.

Luo said the triangle produced 70 to 80 tons of heroin annually and 80 percent of this was smuggled to China overland along the porous Sino-Myanmar border.

According to Chinese police maps seen by AFP in 2002, a wide belt of poppy plantations sits just inside the Myanmar side of the country's 1,400-kilometer (840-mile) border with China.

Domestic drugs dealers usually assemble at border points in southwestern Yunnan province, hiding narcotics in vehicles, mail or on people, although new routes are opening up.

"Recently, overseas drugs rings have opened new trafficking routes, smuggling narcotics to China through India and Nepal," Luo said.

Luo said people under the age of 35 made up 72.2 percent of China's more than one million registered drug addicts.

While police readily admit that heroin and other drugs like ecstasy and methamphetamines are easily available in bars and night clubs in cities around the country, most addicts are poor farmers and the unemployed.

And the numbers are climbing, sparking alarm among Chinese authorities because of the knock on effects on crime rates and prostitution. An estimated 80 percent of drug users commit crime or sell sex to feed their habits, Xinhua said.

Drug addiction has also provided a major channel of HIV infection.

While China admits to 840,000 HIV carriers, international organizations, including the United Nations, suggest it is more than one million and could rise to 20 million by 2010.

"Drug abuse has caused great economic losses to the country. Heroin alone would cost 27 billion yuan (3.3 billion dollars) a year, if each addict used 0.3 grams a day," said Luo.

"The situation is very serious, leading to tremendous pressure and fresh challenges for anti-drug authorities in China."

Luo acknowledged that the drug producing industry in China was also rampant.

He said "ice" producing factories were expanding from the traditional coastal Guangdong and Fujian provinces to inland areas, while there had been a rise in chemicals stolen for the illegal manufacture of drugs.

Raw chemicals are being smuggled to the Netherlands and Belgium for making "ice" and ecstacy while substances like ephedrine flow to Russia through the border port in northern Heilongjiang province.

Authorities are, however, making some progress, scoring a series of successes last year through closer international cooperation and joint campaigns.

Nassir hesitantly admits he slept with a nine-year-old girl because the clan elders in Isiolo, 200 km (124.3 miles) northeast of Kenyan capital Nairobi, said it would rid him of frequent bouts of illness brought on by HIV.

"I was given a girl of nine years to sleep with for a week," Nassir said. "I took pity on her but if it wasn't for this disease I wouldn't have slept with her...I had to do what the elders had said."

Isiolo's pastoralist community practices a mix of Muslim and traditional African beliefs. Illiteracy is high and AIDS is shrouded in stigma and superstition.

"I am still afraid (that I may die), but there are many people from my area who have done it," Nassir said. "Many survive, many die."

Although he paid 15,000 shillings ($195.9) and his mother gave up two goats for the purging ceremony, Nassir still gets ill once in a while and goes for treatment in a clinic run by a local charity whose Swahili name Pepo La Tumaini Jangwani, means Wind of Hope in the Arid Land.

After the ceremony, which includes gouging out a goat's heart while it is still alive, the people of the village engage in a sexual orgy intended to help a son or brother cleanse himself.

Nassir said he'll get tested at the end of the year to see if he has been cured.

BREEDING GROUND

Two million of Kenya's 30 million people are HIV-positive and 1.5 million have already died.

Khadija Omar Rama, the founder of the Tumaini charity said that despite the fact that up to 800 Kenyans die every day from AIDS, communities like Isiolo continue to embrace traditional practices which actively help to spread AIDS.

Another ancient custom permits men of the same generation to have indiscriminate and unprotected sex with the wives of their peers. A spear propped by the door of a man's house means that someone else from his age group is in bed with his wife.

"None of us is jealous about someone else sleeping with our wives because we all do it," said Nassir, who says he has slept with the wives of many men, even though he suspects he has HIV.

Nassir thinks his wife, who died shortly after his cleansing ceremony, was infected with AIDS. She was never tested.

One woman who did not want to be named said her husband stabbed her in the eye for objecting to having their daughter take part in a cleansing ceremony.

She now belongs to the Maula, a group of women sponsored by Tumaini who hope to convince people to abandon the old ways by reporting the use of girls in purging ceremonies and offering alternative rituals for men with AIDS.

ALTERNATIVE CLEANSING RITES

Rama says alternative cleansing rituals are highly contentious and the Maula must operate in secret. Men who do visit, come to them under the cover of darkness.

"The women have to be very discreet about the alternative method of cleansing and this is counter-productive for their campaign," Rama said.

In a dome-shaped hut made of sticks, nine veiled Maula members sit in a semi-circle for the cleansing ceremony. The earthen floor is covered in mats and all footwear is left outside what is now considered holy ground.

Popcorn, roasted coffee berries cooked in oil, coffee cups, sugar cubes and a bar of soap lie in the center while a pungent smell from a small incense burner passed from woman to woman as part of the ritual, assaults the nostrils.

Rama said reporting traditional purging ceremonies to the authorities can sometimes cause further trauma for the girls who have been forced to take part. She said two girls disappeared after the Maula reported that they had been forced to take part. One is still missing.

One traditional custom which may help save some women from the deadly virus that has afflicted much of sub Saharan Africa comes at a price.

Many women who suspect their husbands are infected with AIDS or HIV have been turning to sufis, women healers, to put off their husband's advances.

Traditionally, a woman seeking to join an elder council or tribal leadership is required to stop having sex and will ask a sufi to her bedroom to discourage her husband. In such circumstances the husband eventually gives up.

But women who choose to use a sufi are not permitted to ever have sex again and they are killed if caught in the act.

($1=76.55 Kenyan Shilling)

By Manoah Esipisu

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki Sunday defended his government's record on fighting AIDS, a day after the main opposition party put the health crisis at the center of its election campaign.

South Africa has the world's highest number of HIV/AIDS cases -- an estimated one in nine of its 45 million people are infected, but only last year did the government agree under pressure to provide anti-retroviral drugs at state hospitals.

AIDS activists say even that plan is moving too slowly and the disease kills an estimated 600 South Africans every day.

But Mbeki rejected criticism of his government.

"I challenge anybody to produce any other country of the world that has a comparable (AIDS) program. The deputy president will continue to lead us in this matter," said Mbeki, whose ruling African National Congress(ANC) is widely tipped to win a general election expected in late March or early April.

He told public broadcaster SABC the government would make very large allocations to the AIDS battle in this year's budget, but said he did not personally have to head the campaign.

He rejected criticism by opposition leaders and activists that the government had acted too slowly and said agencies were examining deaths data from 1996, which would for the first time give a more accurate picture of the scale of the AIDS crisis.

Saturday, the opposition Democratic Alliance vowed to offer a credible alternative to the ANC in the third elections since the end of apartheid, campaigning on AIDS, crime and jobs.

Officials said the party, which won 10 percent of the vote in 1999, was targeting the perceived weaknesses of the ANC.

Although an estimated 5.3 million South Africans have HIV/AIDS, officials long resisted demands for life-saving anti-retroviral drugs in the public sector, saying the drugs were too expensive, difficult to take and potentially toxic.

After the government bowed to pressure from medical experts and AIDS activists last year, the Health Ministry said as many as 50,000 people could begin receiving the drugs in 2004.

Officials respond to criticism about a slow roll-out of the drugs, saying they are battling capacity constraints.

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil on Monday began handing out a record 10 million contraceptives to stop the spread of AIDS during Carnival when casual sex rises.

With the pre-Lenten festival less than two weeks away, the "nothing gets past a condom" campaign focuses on the 14 million Brazilians, or 15 percent of those sexually active, who don't believe condoms prevent the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus.

"Carnival is a time when there's a lot of contact, you've got people wearing very few clothes, which ends up stimulating more intense sexual relations," said Health Minister Humberto Costa, as he handed out the first condoms of the campaign aimed at middle class and poor Brazilian men between 18 and 39.

The promotion of condoms in this year's Carnival has upset Brazil's Catholic Church, which opposes the distribution of contraceptives by the nation's highly successful anti-AIDS program on the grounds that it promotes promiscuity.

Brazil is the world's biggest Roman Catholic country and the church has said Kama Sutra poses and condom themes in floats in this year's Rio de Janeiro Carnival parade, as promised by one Samba group, will mean Brazil is "discredited in front of the world with unacceptable scenes."

"We respect all religions' positions, our concern is the health of the population," said Costa, after he played a radio jingle "I'm the condom my love, you can get into this without any sweat, use me and abuse me, I'm the condom you can trust."

Keen to avoid any unnecessary confrontation with the church the minister had earlier vetoed the initial campaign's slogan "Put faith in the condom" proposed by the ministry.

By EMMANUEL CAMILLO, Associated Press Writer

MAPUTO, Mozambique - AIDS is threatening Mozambique's education system by killing teachers and orphaning students who have to leave school to take care of relatives, Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi said Tuesday.

About 17 percent of the country's teachers are HIV positive — 4 percent higher than the national prevalence rate among people aged 15 to 49, Mocumbi said.

Speaking at a regional seminar on education and AIDS in the capital, Mocumbi said this will lead to the death of 1.6 percent of teachers each year. According to UNICEF, Africa's fourth-poorest country will be home to 926,000 AIDS orphans by 2010.

"Many children in Mozambique have already begun to act as heads of households," Mocumbi said. "They begin to work at a tender age, to attend to the needs of their relatives, or to spend all their time supporting them. And so they are obliged to leave school."

Last year, Mozambique's agriculture ministry said that 1 million children had already left school.

Mocumbi said it is vital to develop new information and prevention strategies and to educate the youth to halt the spread of the AIDS.

"If we are not capable through education to ensure that young people know how to avoid the disease, then all other efforts we make will be meaningless," Mocumbi said.

NEW DELHI - A Geneva-based fund said Tuesday it was ready give the Indian government $26.1 million of assistance pledged toward its efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS.

About a year ago, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria pledged $100 million to India to help fight AIDS. But disbursal was delayed by procedural hurdles.

On Tuesday, the Geneva-based body said it was ready to disburse the first tranche of $26.1 million, to be spent over two years.

"This grant is intended to support India in its crucial phase of tackling the epidemic," Executive Director Richard Feachem said in a statement.

About 4.6 million Indians, or less than 1 percent of the country's adult population, have HIV, according to the government, which does not count the number of child victims.

A U.S. government report last year predicted the total number of Indians with AIDS — children and adults — could jump as high as 25 million by 2010, a projection the Indian government rejects.

The money from the Global Fund will be used mostly for India's plan to offer free drugs to HIV/AIDS-infected people, the statement said.

The scheme is expected to roll out in April, starting with 100,000 patients in six states with a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

These include Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu in southern India, western Maharshtra state and the most populous Uttar Pradesh state in northern India.

The plan to offer free drugs is a "significant scale-up" in India's fight against the disease, which has the world's second-largest number of HIV-infected people, the Global Fund said earlier.

BLANTYRE (AFP) - Malawi's President Bakili Muluzi urged Malawians to break the stigma attached to AIDS as a first step in fighting the disease, which has infected more than 14 percent of the country's 11 million people.

"My own brother, third born in our family, died of AIDS three years ago," said Muluzi as he launched a long-awaited official programme to fight the killer disease.

His family had agreed to make known his brother's cause of death to help "change attitudes, break the silence and initiate open talk about sex and AIDS.

"I have no apologies in making this publicly known to Malawians. We should be open and break the silence about HIV/AIDS.

"The fight against the killer disease could only succeed if we break (the) barriers of silence, stigma and discrimination."

Muluzi said that with 350 new infections daily in the impoverished southern African country there was "no alternative but to openly discuss the serious problem that we have, so that we are able to teach people about the dangers of the disease."

"Why hide?" he asked, adding that he had never heard Malawians openly declare at funerals that their relatives had died of HIV/AIDS-related diseases.

Malawi's "home-grown" policy and programme to fight AIDS would offer a legal and administrative framework for HIV/AIDS programmes, largely funded by donors including the European Union, the UN Development Programme, the United States, Britain, Canada and the World Bank, said Muluzi.

It will help Malawi embark on a new path to fighting the epidemic, he added.

The director of the UN AIDS agency, Peter Piot, said his organisation and other donors had mobilised up to 400 million dollars to fight the scourge in Malawi.

He said donors were willing to provide long-term support provided the "money reaches people and the agenda is on action and implementation."

Piot said the new policy would "re-charge our batteries in the long fight against HIV/AIDS and slow down the spread of the disease."

"Stigma turns people away and can kill people before the virus kills them."

Muluzi, who retires in May at the end of his second five-year-term, also implored Malawians to go for HIV tests, saying he himself had undergone one.

For inquisitive Malawians who wanted to know his HIV status, Muluzi added: "The good news is that it is good news.

"How many of us know of our HIV status?" he asked, bemoaning the fact that only three percent of Malawians had been tested.

"What are we afraid of?" Muluzi asked, adding that young people needed to know about their status before marriage.

With donor support, Malawi in 1999 launched a 110-million dollar, five-year plan to break the silence about AIDS.

Biswick Mwale, who heads Malawi's National AIDS Commission, said that under the new AIDS policy some three million dollars will be made available to help subsidize anti-retroviral treatment.

He also added that infection rates appeared to have stabilized.

"The estimated HIV prevalence ... indicates that the epidemic has stabilized over the years," he said.

However, in September, a World Bank report warned that up to half of Malawi's professional workforce could die of HIV/AIDS by 2005.

Professionals in the education and health sectors are particularly affected as are members of the army and the police, the study said.

HIV/AIDS has cut Malawi's life expectancy to just 36, according to the UN Development Programme.

Mwale said about 760,000 adults Malawians were infected with HIV of whom 56 percent were women. Some 70,000 adults die of the disease every year, he added.

Montagnier's discovery led directly to the development of a test to detect HIV in blood.

Nineteen inventors will be honored this year including US professor Robert Gallo, the co-discoverer of the AIDS virus, the hall of fame said.

The Akron, Ohio, inventors' hall of fame was founded in 1973 by the US Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Association.

BRAZZAVILLE (AFP) - The AIDS virus is spreading in the main cities and towns of the Republic of Congo, with a higher average rate of HIV-positive people among women than among men, according to a survey.

Carried out in November by the central African country's Study Centre for Public Health Development (CREDES) with World Bank support, the survey showed that the national average rate of infection was 4.2 percent among people aged 15 to 49 in a total population of approaching three million.

The rate of infection varied considerably from one city to another and according to age group and sex, showed the results of the survey which was made available to AFP by the National Council for Fighting Aids ((CNLT) without giving the total number of those tested.

"The outcome means that we're going to have to redouble our efforts with regard to prevention and care for those infected and affected by the AIDS virus," CNLT executive secretary Marie Franck Puruhence said.

Puruhence, who is in charge of the AIDS programme in the former French colony, western neighbour of the vast Democratic Republic of Congo, added that the survey is the basis for newly developed strategies.

"The risk of being HIV-positive was significantly higher in southern regions than in Brazzaville, and in the Central and Northern administrative regions," the CNLT report said.

"The pandemic is spreading in the big towns and regions. There is a tendency towards 'feminisation' with an average rate of 4.7 percent among woman compared with 3.8 percent among men," it added.

The rate in the southwestern Atlantic port city and oil terminal of Pointe-Noire was five percent, 3.3 percent in Brazzaville, 9.4 percent in Dolisie, the third largest town in the south, and 10.3 percent in Sibiti, in the southwest.

"The risk ... increases with age, and earlier among women than among men... It appears clearly that up to the age of 35, women are twice as affected as men."

Among ages by group, the overall rate was "particularly high among those between 35 and 39, with 8.4 percent, and 40 and 44, with 7.8 percent."

The main methods of transmitting the HIV virus were unprotected sex, blood transfusions and mother-to-child transmission at childbirth.

The level of education had a marked effect on the results.

The number of HIV-positive people was 5.4 percent among those without formal education, 4.1 percent for those who had taken schooling to primary level, 4.8 percent among those who had completed the first state of secondary education, three percent among college graduates and 2.5 percent for those who had gone on to university.

In the interest of accuracy, all the HIV-positive samples found during the survey were double-checked at the Bichat hospital in Paris, the CNLT reported.