NAIROBI (AFP) - The number of people with HIV /AIDS in Kenya is estimated to have fallen around 40 percent from four years ago due to death and awareness slowing new infections, a health ministry official said."The average number of people infected with HIV/AIDS has dropped from about 2.5 million people four years ago to an average of 1.4 million" according to a new study, said the director of Kenya's National AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Programme (NASCOP), Kenneth Chebet.

The survey, the Kenya Demographic Health Survey, carried out by the Central Bureau of Statistics and NASCOP showed that "a maximum of 1.8 million people and a minimum of a million people are living with HIV/AIDS in the country," said Chebet.

"The average was about 1.4 million people and this is the closest and most accurate estimate ever in the country," he told AFP.

Chebet attributed the downward trend to awareness campaigns and deaths among those with full-blown AIDS.

An estimated 1.5 million people have died of AIDS in Kenya since 1984, according to official figures.

Kenya's 1999 census gave the country's population as 28.7 million.

A surprise priority in last year's State of the Union address, Bush pledged $15 billion to help combat HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean -- effectively tripling U.S. spending over five years.

He touted the initiative during a July visit to Africa, where almost 30 million people live with the disease, including 3 million children under the age of 15.

At $2.7 billion, the 2005 budget request would top the $2.4 billion expected to be approved by Congress for the current fiscal year. The White House had sought closer to $2 billion -- prompting "a good old row" between the president and Irish rock star Bono, who founded an advocacy group for issues affecting Africa.

Some AIDS activists accused the president of not living up to his State of the Union commitment. They hoped for at least $3 billion in Bush's 2005 budget and said Congress had authorized up to $3.6 billion.

Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean has pledged $30 billion -- twice as much as Bush -- for the fight against AIDS by 2008.

White House aides said Bush held back his support for providing $3 billion a year because of concerns a system was not yet in place to use the money effectively.

"President Bush made the largest single upfront commitment in history for an international health initiative involving a specific disease and his budgets are going to continue to reflect that commitment," an administration official said.

The United States already faces record budget deficits expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone.

Activists said more money was needed now to fight AIDS.

"In the face of that kind of an emergency, we've got to front-load the funding to respond. It is not something that we should be scaling up slowly. I don't think it ($2.7 billion) is an adequate response," said Joanne Carter, legislative director of RESULTS, a grass-roots health advocacy organization.

Bush's AIDS initiative calls for providing anti-viral treatment to HIV people in Africa and the Caribbean who cannot afford it. It would also help children who have lost one or both parents and work toward prevention with programs aimed at sexual abstinence, education and promotion of condom use.

Five Bulgarian nurses and two doctors -- one Bulgarian and one Palestinian -- face the death penalty if found guilty of infecting 426 children in a hospital in the northern Libyan town of Benghazi with the virus that causes AIDS.

Twenty-three of the children have already died.

State prosecutors charge that they infected the children with tainted blood products, but Luc Montagnier -- the French doctor who first isolated the Human Immune-Deficiency Virus (HIV) -- testified in September that the epidemic had begun before the arrival of the accused.

He said it was probably caused by unsterilised needles and other equipment.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passi told national radio that the latest development in the trial "does not favour the accused."

"We will however not give up the fight to ensure that they receive a fair trial," added the minister who met with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi to discuss the trial on December 20.

All the accused have pleaded innocent in court.

The Libyan police said two of the nurses and the Palestinian doctor admitted guilt, but the three have told the court that they confessed under duress after being maltreated by the police.

According to the radio report, the Libyan experts have also rejected their complaints.

The trial began in February 2000 and is due to resume on January 12.

Most international medical experts agree there are currently no vaccines that prevent the transmission of the HIV virus, and no drugs which can cure AIDS.

But purported miracle cures are sold everywhere in Swaziland, which ignored the AIDS danger for years and is now gripped in a growing panic as the epidemic cuts the tiny African kingdom to the core.

"Con artists are descending on Swaziland like vultures on carrion, it's disgusting," said the Reverend Thaddeus Shongwe, an AIDS activist.

For the equivalent of about $75, more than the net take-home monthly pay of a factory worker, a Swazi can buy a packet of 30 "HIV vaccine pills" that taken orally are said to make the immune system invulnerable to viral attacks.

Despite the cost, hundreds of Swazis lined up to make purchases at the pills' distributor in Mbabane, the Sutitangwe Medical Services company, owned by a Thai national and two Swazis. Calls to the company were not returned.

"People can claim anything they want, and there are enough desperate people who will want to believe them," Shongwe said.

DEATH AND DEVASTATION

In its latest world report, the United Nations AIDS program UNAIDS said Swaziland's HIV/AIDS epidemic "has assumed devastating proportions" with a national prevalence rate of almost 39 percent -- matched only by Botswana.

The loss of adults in their professional prime has hit the teaching, nursing and law enforcement fields in Swaziland, while AIDS is also killing off agricultural workers and contributing to declining harvests in a country hit regularly by famine.

AIDS is creating 35,000 new orphans a year from children who have lost both parents to the disease, a huge number in a country with about one million people. The National Emergency Committee on HIV/AIDS predicts that by 2010 about one sixth of the population will be AIDS orphans under 15.

Anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, the only medicines proven to slow the progress of the disease, are hard to come by in the country, which only recently permitted their sale after saying for years that Swaziland was incapable of testing their effectiveness.

"ARVs have been accepted the world over, but the health minister ... blocked them," AIDS activist Philemon Dube told Reuters. "However, any crackpot can claim any concoction and say it cures AIDS, and it is permitted."

Against this backdrop, even Swazis who have gained prominence in other fields are rushing in with AIDS "cures" to sell -- albeit to a dwindling market. Dr. Ben Dlamini, former head of the Exams Council which administers school placement tests for the education ministry, uses his weekly column in the Swazi Observer newspaper to push for the legalization of marijuana as an AIDS "cure."

"My 'madness' will wipe out AIDS," Dlamini boasted in his column, saying cannabis capsules were being tested in Europe for curing both cancer and AIDS.

GOVERNMENT SILENT ON CLAIMS

Like virtually all claims for AIDS cures, Dlamini's has gone unchallenged by government authorities.

"Swaziland does not have a single pharmacologist in the whole country. There is no effective law to regulate or ban drugs. Only if people are actually poisoned will the health ministry take action," a lawyer at the Swaziland Law Society told Reuters.

In one local press report, Ngwebendze Nhlabatsi, a proponent of an "AIDS vaccine" marketed as V1 Immunitor, dismissed attempts to verify the efficacy of his product.

"Nobody in the Ministry of Health is qualified to comment for or against this pill. Neither the minister, the principal secretary nor the chief pharmacist is qualified. In fact, nobody in the country is qualified to comment," Nhlabatsi said.

Hannie Dlamini, president of the Swaziland AIDS Support Organization which provides counseling and medical assistance to HIV-positive people, said pseudo-science appeared to be winning the day as the government remained silent.

"That's pretty much the attitude of the miracle cure peddlers. They say they have AIDS vaccines and cures and they dare anyone to prove them wrong."

An official at the Ministry of Health, Thuli Sibiya, said she would urge the ministry to issue a statement about drugs claiming to cure AIDS, but would not say when it might emerge.

DIVINE INTERVENTION

Fundamentalist preachers are doing booming business in prayer sessions where Swazis flock to be cured of AIDS through divine intervention.

The appeals appear to have little effect. People are dying in such large numbers that the main mortuary in Manzini, Swaziland's largest urban center, is opening a new facility next month that will double its capacity.

Funerals, which used to be weekend affairs, are so numerous that some must now take place on weekdays -- which traditionalists regard as a major breach of cultural etiquette.

Ordinary Swazis, beset by a disease most fear but few understand, hang their hopes on anything they can find. Bernice Mphagase, a secretary who is HIV-positive, does without some necessities to purchase "herbs from Asia" she hopes can help.

"I put on weight when I use the herbs. My body feels stronger. I don't think the herbs will cure me, but they are definitely making me better in my condition," Mphagase told Reuters.

"Around 450 policemen have tested positive for HIV," Prem Kishan Jain, the joint police commissioner for administration, said Wednesday.

The figure is initial, with medical data not yet compiled for much of Bombay's 40,000-strong police force.

"A comprehensive campaign has been launched and we are educating police officials about AIDS," Jain said.

Jain said the department was studying how the police were infected.

However, it is an open secret in Bombay that police are among the major patrons of sex workers.

Jain said most of the policemen who tested positive for HIV were low-level constables who were not well-educated.

India officially has at least 4.58 million people with HIV/AIDS, second only to South Africa with five million. A US study last year said HIV cases would skyrocket if the government did not move aggressively promote safe sex.

Bombay policemen are known for their long working hours, high stress levels and poor pay.