With up to one million people already infected with HIV/AIDS in China, the epidemic will quickly get worse if its spread from high risk groups to the general population is not urgently checked, said Khalid Malik, the UN resident coordinator in China.

"Our view is if China does not take up the fight against AIDS seriously and actively, there could be up to 10 million AIDS patients by 2010," he said.

Since a 2002 joint UN-China report on the AIDS situation in the country, the government has voiced a stronger commitment to fighting the disease, but it is too early to tell how strong that commitment is, he added.

An explosion in the number of AIDS patients would badly hurt China's efforts to alleviate poverty, Malik told journalists.

Bold economic reforms in China have worked to reduce grinding poverty over the last 20 years, Malik said.

But he said development in rural areas has lagged far behind that in the cities, and even there the urban poor continue to suffer.

Meanwhile, China's dynamic plan to triple its gross domestic product by 2020 could also wreak serious havoc on the environment, if economic growth is pursued blindly, he said.

"China's footprint on the global environment, especially if it succeeds in its plan to triple GDP, will result in a lot of issues coming up," Malik said.

China's rising energy consumption is already affecting global energy prices and contributing to an increase of greenhouse gases, while the cutting down of forests and the urbanization of farm lands could result in a challenge to global food security.

Further destruction of China's environment as the economy booms will increase the already widening gap between urban and rural areas unless the government begins taking more "pro-poor" fiscal, monetary and planning policies, he said.

Malik also said China's unbalanced birth sex ratio could also cause future problems.

"On gender equality, 10 years ago the sex ratio at birth in China was rather balanced, but now the sex ratios are changing..., which has large implications to society as a whole," Malik said.

Officials statistics place the sex ratio at birth at 116.8 male births per 100 female births, while independent studies go significanly higher.

According to some Chinese studies, China could have an army of up to 30 million men of marrigeable age without a partner by 2020, if current trends remain unchanged, a situation that could greatly affect social stability.

"This Dublin conference must send out a clear message. HIV/AIDS is a potent threat to our young people."

Ahern also warned that people must not "delude themselves that HIV/AIDS was exclusively an African problem," referring to the continent which has been hit hardest by the virus.

"Such a mistaken view is unjust and unfair to our African partners. It is also dangerous as it encourages complacency and inaction in our own region.

"Explosive rates of HIV/AIDS are also being recorded outside of Africa, including in Europe and Central Asia," Ahern told the conference entitled "Breaking the barriers - a partnership to fight HIV/AIDS in Europe and Central Asia".

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan  warned in a message to the gathering that 80 percent of those infected in Eastern Europe with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, are young.

Ignoring this would be a "deadly mistake", he said.

"No nation can afford to see its future workers and leaders struck down by AIDS before they reach maturity."

Eastern Europe and Central Asia were seeing AIDS spread at the most rapid rate of anywhere in the world, the conference was told.

In 1998, only 30,000 people were infected in the two regions against 1.5 million now, according to a report by Peter Piot, the executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations body tackling the disease.

Before the conference opened, Piot warned that the enlargement of the European Union on May 1 could risk seeing this swift advance in HIV infection moving further west into Europe.

UNAIDS has called on EU governments to do more to help the 10 mainly former Soviet Bloc nations joining the community to tackle the spread of the virus.

"In the new EU, this should be one of the priorities," Piot told BBC Radio.

"Fighting AIDS is something that benefits not only the population of the countries it is done in, but also their neighbours, because the viruses don't need a visa and don't respect borders.

"It is clear that expansion of the EU is not only about free markets and political union, but also about social aspects."

On May 1, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will join the EU, along with Mediterranean island states Cyprus and Malta.

The numbers dipped significantly for five months beginning in April as the SARS outbreak kept people from clinics, a Health Department spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Sexual transmission was to blame for 70 percent of the cases in the city. Fourteen percent of those infections were reported in people aged 55 or above, said S.S. Lee, a consultant for the Health Department.

Lee said despite the drop, HIV/AIDS is still a matter of concern.

"It is estimated that over 3,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Hong Kong. The high HIV rates in neighbouring cities, extensive human mobility across borders and high-risk behaviour are some of the factors that may predispose Hong Kong to an upsurge of the epidemic," Lee added.

President George W. Bush announced one year ago the program to battle the disease worldwide.

Nine billion dollars are destined to 14 countries in Africa and the Caribbean: Botswana, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Another list is to be announced soon.

The first 350 million dollars is headed to those countries representing half of the world's AIDS cases.

"This money will go to scale up programs that are providing anti-retroviral treatment; prevention programs, including those targeted to youth and safe medical practices programs; and programs to provide care for orphans and vulnerable children," Tobias said.

Five billion dollars are earmarked for ongoing bilateral programs in more than 100 countries and one billion was set aside for UN anti-AIDS campaigns.

TAIPEI (AFP) - All hotels and sauna parlors in Taiwan must make condoms available to their customers in the island's latest attempt to curb the spread of AIDS, a cabinet official said.

Owners who fail to provide them through vending machines or on demand face a maximum fine of 30,000 Taiwan dollars (900 US), according to the proposal which is to be put before parliament.

A survey by Taipei's National Yang Ming University found that some 6.4 percent of gay sauna patrons were HIV  carriers and only 40 percent of the customers used condoms when having sex with partners there.

Saunas, for both relaxation and furtive sexual activity, are widespread across Taiwan with some known as gay meeting places in a still conservative society that frowns on same-sex relationships.

The government's move was meant to curb the spread of the fatal disease which has killed 920 Taiwanese out of 5,283 recorded HIV carriers by the end of January. The number of carriers represents a 19 percent rise from a year ago.

Speaking at an eight-day conference in West Bengal's Calcutta Mishra said: "HIV and AIDS is not only a health problem, it has a far-reaching impact on the developing economy of India,

The conference has drawn more than 5,000 sex workers from various Indian states and delegates of sex workers' organisations from Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, New Zealand and Canada to look at ways of battling the disease.

An estimated 30,000 sex workers are expected to attend over the course of the week.

"AIDS threatens to become a crisis of alarming proportion in India, undermining public health development unless an urgent action plan is adopted to slow the spread of the disease," India's Health Secretary J.V.R. Prasad Rao told an international conference of sex workers.

An Indian government-funded project launched 12 years ago in Sonagachi, housing more than 8,000 sex workers, has successfully slowed the spread of HIV/AIDS, and can serve as an example for similar scheme nationwide, Rao said.

"We must send a message across the country that urgent action, based on the Sonagachi model, is needed to fight HIV and AIDS in India," he told the meeting.

The programme combines free distribution of condoms with an education campaign.

There are more than two million sex workers in India who are highly susceptible to the disease because of reluctance by Indian males to use condoms and ignorance about the disease, experts say.

India officially has around 4.58 million people living with HIV/AIDS, second only to South Africa's five million, and a recent study warned that the figure could skyrocket if urgent action is not taken.

According to the World Health Organisation, 95 percent of the 40 million people infected with the virus live in developing nations.

Some 30 million people have died of AIDS while around 14,000 are infected with HIV each day around the world.

 

Nigeria seeks private sector support to fight AIDS

Fri Feb 27,10:54 AM ET

LAGOS (AFP) - Nigeria is seeking private sector support in its battle to prevent HIV/AIDS sapping the economic lifeblood of Africa's most populous nation, officials said.

"We are not asking for money from the OPS (organised private sector), but collaboration, using their core competencies," said Babatunde Osotimehin, the head of the state-run National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA), in press reports confirmed by his office.

According to the latest official figures 5.4 percent of Nigeria's massive population, estimated at more than 126 million, have been infected with HIV.

But many experts say the proportion is already be much higher, and that the virus is shifting into the general population from high-risk groups such as soldiers, truck-drivers and prostitutes.

Osotimehin said companies should educate the country's workforce to the dangers of HIV/AIDS and provide prevention education as well as counselling and medical care for employees already affected.

He suggested mobile 'phone operators should send AIDS awareness messages to their customers by test message and urged hotels -- which in Nigeria often double as brothels -- to hand out information leaflets.