The move comes after several years of steady growth in the proportion of inmates suffering from AIDS, the paper reported.

It quoted a lawmaker as saying AIDS sufferers among the province's prison population are "fearless" and carry "a trump card" in the form of their disease.

The lawmaker did not elaborate on the remarks, but he appeared to accuse AIDS victims of intimidating fellow inmates by threatening to infect them.

China is aiming to keep new AIDS infections to around 1.5 million by 2010, although low levels of education exacerbate the likelihood of further contamination.

Until last year, China denied it had been affected by the global AIDS epidemic. Official estimates now put the number of people infected with HIV or AIDS at 840,000.

"As many as 58 percent of this age (nine-17) say they know nothing about the dangers of illegal drug use," it said.

The agency warned that even when education about the virus was available, its effect on changing the behaviour of young people in the region was negligible.

"Research among vocational students in northern Thailand has shown that even when awareness of HIV-AIDS is high, unsafe sex and drug use can still be common," it said.

The warning comes as United Nations officials and government representatives from across the region gather in Bangkok for a meeting Tuesday aimed at developing better ways of educating the region's youth about health issues.

"It is not enough simply to provide young people with information. They must also be helped to develop the skills that will enable them to negotiate, to assess risk and to make decisions," UNICEF's regional HIV-AIDS advisor Robert Bennoun said in a statement.

Bennoun said many young people who knew how to avoid infection were still unable or unwilling to access condoms, or voluntary testing and counselling services.

Girls are often unable to negotiate the terms of their sexual relations, including condom use, while young injecting drug users are often aware of the risks but fail to act for a variety of reasons including low self-esteem, UNICEF said.

The meeting will examine how rapidly changing social and economic conditions in the region are affecting young people -- including increased drug and alcohol use, earlier sexual activity, the requirements of a cash economy and the risk of HIV-AIDS.

Countries attending the meeting are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, East Timor, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vanuatu and Vietnam.

The report was issued on June 5, 1981 by the US Centers for Disease Control.

"That is ironic, it certainly will forever tie those two issues together," said Jeffrey Prang, a city councilman in West Hollywood, a gay-dominated Los Angeles-area city.

Jon Beaupre, a gay journalist and Los Angeles radio talk show host who is HIV-positive, said Reagan's death "brought mixed feelings."

"The fact that he reflected the values of a lot of people was unmistakable. Clearly, Ronald Reagan was a man of principle and integrity," the 51-year old said.

"But he did as much as any man on the planet to hold back social progress for lesbians and gay men.

"We wonder today how far we would be in solving the AIDS crisis if Reagan had both recognized the scope of the tragedy and had more respect for the plight of gay men who were dying by the thousands from AIDS," he said.

The broadcaster and journalism lecturer warned that other members of the gay community would be a lot less kind to Reagan's memory.

"I have a feeling that an awful lot of gay people are going to be cheering, that 'Ding-dong! The wicked witch is dead,'" he said.

Reagan, president from 1981 to 1989, came under intense fire from gay activists in the early 1980s for not allocating major federal funding to combat AIDS as it spread dramatically, first among gay men.

The issue became a gay rallying cry that inspired gay political activism in the United States.

Despite huge progress in AIDS and HIV research and broader social acceptance of gays and lesbians in the 21st century, Reagan's death brought back painful memories in the community.

CAPE TOWN (AFP) - The South African government is in hot water over its AIDS policy after it temporarily capped its national programme to dole out free drugs and blamed pharmaceutical firms for erratic supplies.

The health ministry announced this week that no new patients, especially children, would receive free anti-retrovirals (ARVs) as the demand outstripped supply.

Mark Heywood, a spokesman for the AIDS lobby group Treatment Action Campaign which went to court to force Pretoria to provide free ARVs to HIV-positive pregnant women, said the government was shirking responsibility by blaming pharmaceutical companies.

"There should be no problem with supply, there are supplies of all necessary essentials with pharmaceutical companies," he said Wednesday.

"The government needs to do better planning and it needs transparent systems to ensure no supply disruption in the availability of proper medicines."

South Africa has one of the highest AIDS rates in the world, with UNAIDS estimating that 5.3 million people, or one in nine, are infected.

President Thabo Mbeki has come under fire in the past for failing to quickly deal with the pandemic and for questioning the link between HIV and AIDS.

A national roll-out program was launched last November and Mbeki promised in his state-of-the-nation address last month to provide free drugs to 50,000 HIV sufferers by March 2005.

But less than a week after Mbeki's pledge, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said that a shortage of anti-AIDS drugs, especially for children, was a serious impediment to the program.

The health ministry on Tuesday decided that no more children could be put on ARVs due to the "apparent incapacity" of the pharmaceutical industry to cope with demands.

Hospitals participating in the AIDS treatment programme were told to make sure they had enough supplies of the medication before enrolling new patients.

Health ministry spokesman Sibani Mngadi said the government had secured limited stocks of the medication as an temporary measure, while 10 tenders for permanent supplies were currently being considered.

He said the tender process would be finalised "within a few weeks".

"The South African ARV rollout has called for anti-retrovirals in volumes we have never seen before," he said.

"A secure supply of ARV drugs is crucial because the medication is a lifelong treatment. Interruptions could lead to the development of resistance."

Maureen Kirkman, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association representing 23 companies, said they needed to know the quantity of drugs needed well in time.

"Manufacturers need sufficient lead time and need to know the required quantities and sufficient time to plan when manufacturing medicine," she said.

Kevin McKenna from the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim said it had been able to supply all its individual clients with ARVs.

"We have not been requested to supply the government's treatment programme. The tenders are going to to companies that produce generics," he said.

"If we were suddenly requested by the state to supply them with a massive quantity of drugs, we would run into problems," McKenna said.

The Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that 56 percent of those polled believe the country needs to be spending more both domestically and abroad, while 9 percent say too much is being spent.

Those supporting more spending believe it will do good -- 55 percent say spending more money on HIV/AIDS prevention in developing countries will lead to meaningful progress. That compares to 40 percent in 2002, the nonprofit Kaiser Foundation said.

More than 40 million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus, most of them in Africa. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people.

The United States has a $15 billion, five-year plan to battle the virus overseas. Many groups argue it is not nearly enough.

Kaiser commissioned a telephone survey by Princeton Survey Research Associates of a nationally representative random sample of 2,902 adults. It has a margin of error of two points.

When asked about U.S. foreign aid, 56 percent of those polled said the U.S. government currently does not spend enough on stopping the spread of HIV, while 27 said it spends the right amount.

This compares to 52 percent who believe the United States should spend more on world hunger and 25 percent who want more spending on peace efforts, according to the survey, published on the Internet at http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/pomr060204pkg.cfm.

Kaiser said 36 percent of those polled named AIDS as the most urgent health problem facing the world today, putting it second behind cancer at 41 percent.

"In discussing Americans' views of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, and what they think about the role of the U.S. in helping solve this global problem, it's important to set the context with their views on foreign aid in general," Kaiser said in a statement.

"More than six in 10 adults (62 percent) think the U.S. currently spends too much on foreign aid, while about one in five (18 percent) say it spends about the right amount, and one in 10 (10 percent) say the U.S. spends too little on foreign aid."

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

He added: "Jimmy Carter would spend Thanksgiving sleeping on a cot in Zambia surrounded by mosquito-infested waters. What won him the Nobel was walking the walk, not just talking the talk."