China is aiming to keep new 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 infected with HIV or AIDS at 840,000 people.

While some experts believe that to be a very conservative estimate, Piot said "we are confident it's not millions".

It is the poorest and most marginalized sections of society such as farmers, who sold blood to make ends meet, drug addicts and prostitutes that have been worst hit by the disease.

But Piot warned that AIDS could spread to the general population, in particular its more prosperous cities and provinces, if the government did not take more rigorous action.

"Everyone started with a small percentage (of people affected)," Piot said, singling out South Africa, where 25 percent of its adult population now suffers from HIV or AIDS.

Piot said the Chinese communist party should "take this on a big way", adding the warning signs were there with 21,000 new cases reported last year, double that of 10,000 in 2002.

He added provincial and local governments were not always getting the message that the problem had to be tackled. "I think that's the challenge ... but the green light is there."

WENLOU, China (AFP) - A leading Chinese activist was under house arrest to stop him speaking with US ambassador to China Clark Randt during the envoy's visit to AIDS villages, despite China pledging more transparency in fighting the spiralling crisis.

Hu Jia, a Beijing-based AIDS campaigner, said he has been confined to his home since agreeing to an interview with a Western television network ahead of the visit to Henan province by Randt Friday.

"They told me they didn't want me to accept the interview ... and they don't want any possibility for me to be involved with the American delegation's visit to Henan province," Hu told AFP.

Randt is visiting Henan, where up to a million poor farmers contracted HIV/AIDS from selling blood in unsanitary government-approved collection schemes, to open the USCDC/Global AIDS Program.

He also visited AIDS villages, including Wenlou, which has been at the forefront of efforts to bring more attention to the AIDS outbreak in Henan with nearly every family in the village of 800 having a relative or family member infected with the disease.

Hu said four Beijing police officers were in his apartment and he has been told he cannot leave until June 10.

"They told me that I would not be able to leave my apartment until June 10, also because of June 4 (the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre)," he said.

A policeman from the area where Hu lives confirmed he was being watched.

"We don't know exactly why he is under surveillance," said the officer, who refused to say more.

Hu regularly assists Gao Yaojie, China's most outspoken and celebrated AIDS campaigner, and said Randt would only see a sanitised view of events in Henan.

"One of the villagers called me today and said there were 400 plain clothes officers along the road to (Wenlou) village and in the village. Many are dressed as farmers," he said.

"They have also prevented some of the outspoken villagers from leaving their homes. They have chosen some of the healthier villagers to meet with the ambassador. He will get a very sanitised version."

A villager in Wenlou told AFP they were ordered not to leave their homes until Randt left.

"We were cordoned off and told not to leave our courtyard homes. A lot of us wanted to talk to him," said Cheng Guoyin, who has AIDS along with his wife. His sister and brother-in-law have already died from the disease.

He said several dozen police officers were in the village.

The US embassy in Beijing said it was following the situation.

"We are aware of the situation and looking into it but right now I don't have anymore," a spokeswoman said. "Across the board, the ambassador cares very deeply about human rights issues."

China, despite pledging to act decisively against an epidemic that the United Nations has described as a "ticking timebomb", has employed similar tactics in the past.

During Vice Premier Wu Yi's visit to Wenlou last December, around 20 villagers were forcefully kept home and prevented from meeting her, they said.

Executive vice health minister Gao Qiang, meanwhile, launched a nationwide campaign Friday to shut down illegal blood stations, which he acknowledged were responsible for many people getting AIDS, the China Daily reported.

He said the drive was designed to strengthen supervision and standardize the blood market, but made no mention of bringing to justice those responsible for the scandal since the mid-1980s.

BEIJING (AFP) - China, which began making AIDS medicine less than two years ago, has become a major exporter of cheap raw material for AIDS drugs and is gearing up to export finished drugs to Third World countries.

The move could see the country -- fast becoming the world's factory for almost every product imaginable -- driving down the worldwide price for the medicine.

But international experts caution that quality must be assured.

In response to a mushrooming HIV/AIDS epidemic that has seen many poor farmers affected, the Chinese government in December 2002 approved several domestic pharmaceutical firms to make generic versions of Western drugs whose patents had run out, to try to lower the cost of treatment.

So far, four Chinese companies are producing the anti-AIDS medicine, and in a short period of time they have made China one of the main exporters of raw material for AIDS drugs.

One company, Shanghai-based Desano Biopharma Co. Ltd., is exporting seven kinds of raw materials to India, Thailand and Brazil, the Xinhua news agency said.

Total export figures were not provided, but the largest annual export of any one kind of material reached 12 tons for Desano, the largest company, according to Ai Lianghua, Desano's general manager.

The other three pharmaceutical companies are also playing a more important role in the global AIDS medicine market.

Last September, Xiamen Mchem Pharma Group signed a five-year contract with the Brazilian government to become the third manufacturer designated to make anti-AIDS drug components for Brazil, according to Xinhua.

The Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd and the Northeast Pharmaceutical Group also saw a large amount of their raw material for anti-AIDS medicine exported to pharmaceutical companies in Africa, Latin America and Asia, including South Korea and India, Xinhua said.

Next on the agenda for these companies is to export finished anti-AIDS medicine.

"This year we will likely export completed medicine to India and some African countries as soon as we get final approval from these countries," Desano spokeswoman Qian Hongya told AFP, indicating he did not expect any problems.

Xiamen Mchem Pharma Group meanwhile has gained authorization from 13 countries in Africa to export anti-AIDS drugs there.

"Technological lags in many African countries retarded the processing of medicine material, so our move to export finished products to these countries will make anti-AIDS drugs available to more people suffering from AIDS," said Zhang Wenhua, Xiamen Mchem's marketing manager.

Zidovudine, a Chinese-made version of a popular anti-AIDS drug, costs only one-tenth of the price it does in developed countries.

And according to Desano's Ai, Desano's partner in South Africa successfully reduced the annual medicine fee for an AIDS patient from more than 10,000 US dollars to 3,000 dollars after using Desano's materials to make drugs.

However, international experts said China's AIDS drugs have not passed standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO).

"Lots of efforts are needed for the improvement of quality," Zhao Pengfei, the WHO's HIV/AIDS coordinator in China, told AFP.

Currently, some 7,000 AIDS patients in China are taking the Chinese anti-retroviral cocktail treatment under a pilot program, but health officials have said about 20 percent of them stopped due to severe side effects.

Desano's Qian, however, argued the drugs were up to standard and were approved by countries like Brazil with wide experience in treating AIDS patients. Efforts were also underway to have the WHO inspect the drugs, he said.

Despite China's initial hiccups, health experts said they supported having more AIDS drug producers if the quality can be controlled.

The investment is part of a 252 million dollar package of projects which will be completed in the next three to five years to improve the rural public health infrastructure, the report said.

The money will help pay for facilities to deal with emergency public health incidents and local disease control centers, as well as HIV/AIDS prevention programs.

China was caught ill-prepared last year when the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome broke out, spreading quickly to several provinces and throughout hospitals due to lack of proper facilities and sufficient training for medical workers.

Many of China's hospitals lacked isolation wards, intensive care units and respirators, while medical workers were not well-trained and did not realize the importance of isolating patients.

China's health care system is chronically short of funds and resources especially in rural areas, despite the fact that 60 percent of the population, or some 800 million people, live in the countryside.

Funding for hospitals has dropped over the years as China weans its public from once free healthcare.

Farmers who are sick often cannot afford to pay for medical care and rely instead on home remedies.

The allotment of funds is part of the central government's pledge earlier this year to increase investment in public health projects needed to meet growing challenges, including HIV/AIDS, the spread of which has produced the world's highest infection rates in some areas.

In many rural areas, doctors as recent as a couple of years ago did not know basic information about HIV/AIDS and turned away patients for fear of catching the disease.

SHANGHAI (AFP) - Shanghai will provide free or reduced cost HIV/AIDS treatment to the poor amid growing alarm about the spread of the disease among residents and migrant workers.

The eastern port city will reduce or abolish charges for AIDS treatment for farmers and other needy patients, as part of a centrally mandated set of measures to intensify the fight against HIV/AIDS, the Liberation Daily said Wednesday.

Among the city's 17 million people, 195 new cases of HIV infection were confirmed last year.

Of the city's 911 existing HIV cases and 110 full-blown AIDS cases, 51 have died since 1987.

Therapy for treating AIDS patients in China usually costs between 30,000 to 50,000 yuan (3,630 to 6,050 dollars), and well exceeds the means of most Chinese, even in Shanghai where the average salary is around 15,000 yuan per year.

The State Council, China's cabinet, last week published the measures in a circular to governments at all levels, ordering them to follow the new guidelines.

Pregnant women will receive free medical services in a bid to reduce the possibility of mother-to-baby HIV transmission, said the circular carried by Xinhua news.

Poor AIDS patients and HIV carriers with no means to buy medicine, as well as their families and relatives, will receive financial assistance from the government.

The government also said that for the first time effectiveness in preventing AIDS will be a major criterion for judging local officials' overall work performance.

Experts warn that the disease is now spreading from high-risk groups to the general population and the number of infected could reach 10 million by 2010 if urgent measures are not taken.

Official statistics indicate there are 840,000 HIV carriers in China, but Chinese and international officials have said the true figure could be much higher, as many carriers do not know they have the disease.

China last year began to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic three years after the media exposed a massive outbreak in the countryside affecting farmers who sold blood at government sponsored drives in the mid-1990s.

HONG KONG (AFP) - HIV and AIDS are on the rise among Hong Kong's gay community with fears that increasing numbers of visitors from China are spreading the virus, health officials said.

There were 67 new HIV infections in the territory for the first quarter, said Michael Chan, senior medical officer for preventative medicine at the Department of Health. The figure was up 15 on the same quarter last year, but down from the 72 registered at the end of last year.

However Chan said the rise was greatest among gay men, who made up 20 of the 67 HIV infections, up from 11 the previous year. Infections among heterosexuals have declined from 30 to 25.

"There is an increase of HIV-infected cases as a result of men having sex with men," said Chan. "These people do not practice safe sex or have more than one partner so that increases the possibility of contracting the disease."

Since 1984, when the first cases of the virus were detected in Hong Kong, 2,311 people have been registered as HIV-positive.

The number of AIDS cases stood at seven for the first quarter, compared to 14 for the period last year. The total number of AIDS cases reported since 1984 now stands at 676.

As the figures are cumulative, any falls in the number of infections indicate patients have either died or moved away.

Chan attributed the increase in infections partly to the rising number of visitors from mainland China, where the AIDS epidemic was routinely ignored for many years.

Chinese tourists, once bound by strict travel rules, have been flooding into the city since regulations were relaxed last year.

Chan said easier access for mainlanders was also bringing in more needle-using drug addicts, another high-risk HIV group.

"These drug users come to Hong Kong and share the same needles with people in Hong Kong, which helps spread the disease," Chan warned.

CAPE TOWN (AFP) - A shortage of anti-AIDS drugs is hampering a state-run programme to treat five million South Africans suffering from HIV and AIDS, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang revealed.

"Because the tender process for ARVs (anti-retrovirals) is quite complex and lengthy, interim arrangements were made for provinces to purchase supplies of the drugs but (they) have not been entirely problem-free," she told reporters Thursday in Cape Town.

"The range of generic drugs currently available is limited and this means that prices have been relatively high," she said, adding that long gaps between order and delivery had been a further problem.

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

The government has come under fire in the past for failing to deal with the pandemic, but it approved a national roll-out last November and pledged to make free anti-AIDS drugs available at state hospitals.

The programme kicked off early this year.

Tshabalala-Msimang said ARVs for children "are in particularly short supply and provinces are experiencing problems in accessing them. As a result provincial health departments have taken a cautious approach to initiating treatment."

President Thabo Mbeki promised in his state of the nation address last week that more than 50,000 AIDS sufferers would have access to free drugs by March next year as part of a national treatment plan.

The government had pledged to give free drugs to 50,000 people by the end of March this year but failed to deliver.

Japan's ambassador to Zimbabwe, Tsunehige Iiyama handed over the money to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to help with the growing needs of AIDS orphans here, ZIANA news agency said.

"We hope this contribution to UNICEF will provide some of those most in need with the opportunity to learn how to cope better with their circumstances," the ambassador was quoted as saying.

According to official figures, more than one million Zimbabwean children have been orphaned by AIDS, which kills an estimated 3,000 people a week.

UNICEF promotes the rights, survival, development and protection of children.

BANGKOK (AFP) - The fight between drug firms and producers of cheap generic treatments for HIV-AIDS is expected to be a focus at a global forum on the killer virus to be held in Thailand in July, organisers said.

The six-day International AIDS Conference (IAC) will examine Thailand's ground-breaking generic anti-retroviral (ARV) program, along with the threat posed to it by a looming free-trade agreement with the United States, they said.

"There will be a lot of discussion on the need for cheaper drugs and the need to protect intellectual property rights," IAC co-chair Joep Lange told reporters Wednesday.

"If you really want to treat millions of people in resource-poor countries then there is going to be no other solution than having branded companies and generic companies working together to meet demand," he said.

The Thai government has repeatedly come under fire from US drug giants over its ARV program, which distributes cheap generic drugs to Thais living with the virus and to some neighbouring countries.

Last December, the Thai health ministry announced plans to provide ARV medicines to 50,000 patients with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, citing the increased production of the relatively cheap, locally-made treatments.

IAC community program co-chair Donald de Gagne said Wednesday that rising production could grind to a halt if the kingdom signed a trade deal with Washington.

"Thailand produces enough to look after the people that are needing the treatment right now and is treating the people from Burma (Myanmar) and Laos," said de Gagne.

"They want to scale that up and also export to other neighbouring countries and Africa, but under the US agreement that would not be possible, affecting tens of thousands of people," he said.

Negotiations to frame a free-trade pact between Thailand and the US are expected to be completed in 2005.

The 15-million-dollar conference, themed "Access for All", will bring together up to 20,000 delegates including world leaders, scientists, activists and people living with HIV-AIDS.

The Bangkok meeting is being organised by the United Nations and several non-government organisations, led by the International AIDS Society and the Thai health ministry.

Cambridge University researcher Eric Miller failed to get proper authorisation for his research at the Nyumbani Children's Home for a month beginning mid-April, the Sunday Nation concluded in an investigative report.

The newspaper ran a banner line across its front page denouncing "Shame of children used in experiment on AIDS".

It said Miller "conceded (to the newspaper) that he had not met scientific protocols, including getting ethical clearance" from the government.

"It all started with scientists from Britain's Cambridge University launching a new AIDS study using (the) Nairobi orphanage, despite the home being under investigation for allowing another UK university to conduct tests without permission two years ago," the Nation said in its lengthy report.

Miller told the paper he was aware that the Nyumbani study was the source of a dispute, but said he "would continue his research".

When asked by AFP if Kenyan health authorities were investigating Miller's work, the director of a state-run anti-AIDS programme said: "There is a lot of AIDS research going on.... The government is currently probing which ones are authorised and which ones are not."

The director, who did not want to be named, said authorities were already probing a high-profile study done by scientists from Oxford University at the orphanage in 2000 and 2001, in particular their export of samples taken from the children there.

Nyumbani chief manager Protus Lumiti conceded that Miller had twice visited the children's home, but insisted that no blood samples were flown out of Kenya.

"If, indeed, any samples were taken from the children, I would be the first one to know, as I am with the children 24 hours a day. No blood or any other samples taken from the children was exported," the Nation quoted him as saying.

The earlier Oxford study at the orphanage fueled a bitter dispute in 2000 between the Britain-based scientists and researchers from the University of Nairobi.

The Oxford team omitted names of their Kenyan colleagues on a patent related to an HIV vaccine developed after work jointly conducted on prostitutes in a Nairobi slum, who appeared immune to the HIV virus even after repeated exposure. The dispute was later resolved.

Delegates at a key committee meeting of concerned countries here approved a WHO proposal that aims to raise the number of AIDS sufferers being treated in developing countries to three million by 2005.

Only 400,000 of the six million AIDS sufferers worldwide who are in urgent need of treatment currently receive medical care.

An estimated 34 million to 46 million people across the globe are living with HIV/AIDS and some three million people died of the disease in 2003.

As well as the WHO's "three by five" proposal, the committee approved proposals from Europe and countries in Africa hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic.

The endorsement opened the way for near certain approval by the agency's full assembly on Saturday, officials said.

The final version of the draft WHO resolution urged countries to scale up health services and strengthen the delivery of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support.

It also endorsed the "best use" of international measures easing the acquisition of WHO-approved and cheaper anti-retroviral drugs for poor countries which have not been able to afford such complex therapy.

"This reassures donors that the money will go to proper medicines," Sean Healy of the aid group Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors without Borders) told AFP.

Healy predicted that the resolution would smooth the way for wider international funding of anti-retroviral treatments in developing countries.

The United States had not opposed the move Friday despite previous reticence and objections from some pharmaceutical companies, observers noted.

Half of the world's treatment needs centre on six African countries and on India, while South Africa alone accounts for about one-sixth of AIDS victims in urgent need of medical care, according to the 2004 World Health Report.

Only 100,000 Africans -- just two percent of those who are in an advanced stage of AIDS on the continent -- are treated with the right medicine, if any, according to the WHO.

"African countries welcome the three to five initiative, which they regard as an intermediate stage on the way to universal access to to anti retroviral therapy," African members of the WHO said in a statement.

"The loss of 2.3 million people due to HIV/AIDS in our countries causes unbearable suffering at family and individual level, exacerbates our shortage of human capacity and threatens our socio-economic development," they added.

Less than seven percent of the six million AIDS victims worldwide who urgently need treatment actually receive medical care, according to the WHO's 2004 World Health Report, which adds that the treatment gap is most acute in the poorest countries which are also those hardest hit by HIV/AIDS.

The Swedish funds will help the WHO give three million HIV/AIDS patients access to treatment by the end of 2005, the government said.

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada became the first rich nation to pass pioneering legislation designed to funnel cheap generic drugs to sufferers of HIV/AIDS and other killer diseases in the developing world.

The Senate upper house of parliament endorsed a bill already cleared by the House of Commons, as it forced through a backlog of legislation before a general election expected late next month.

Parliament acted a day after Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin sat down in a voter-friendly meeting with Irish rocker Bono, who crusades to get generic drugs to Africa, where the HIV/AIDS pandemic is scything through populations.

The U2 frontman, referring to a World Trade Organisation agreement, said: "Everybody agreed to do that back in August. But Canada is the first to act."

The bill amends Canada's patent laws to allow the government to override patents to allow some drugs firms to produce and export generic products, including anti-retrovirals.

Despite changes to the bill, some leading international aid groups still criticized the legislation as being too friendly to commercial pharmaceutical giants.

They say the bill's impact could be muted as it limits the number of drugs concerned to 56, the bulk of which are used to treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

There are also doubts whether Canada's generic drugs industry will be able to produce medicines at a low enough cost to make a real difference in Africa and other AIDS hotspots.

The WTO deal last August was spurred by the terrible carnage wreaked by AIDS across Africa, and other developing areas of the world.

Even though 70 percent of the world's AIDS victims die in Africa, according to the continent's health ministers on Thursday, few sufferers can afford drugs that can keep the disease at bay.

Global pharmaceutical giants have been on the defensive for years, trying to protect their intellectual property rights on AIDS drugs they developed.

But in April 2001, 39 of the sector's top firms bowed to heavy pressure and dropped a court bid to stop South Africa importing cheap versions of their AIDS drugs.

Martin had made the generic drugs bill a top priority, and it was seen as one of his final hurdles to clear before calling an election -- a move that will end the current session of parliament and kill pending legislation.

Canada's new legislation on the issue will formally become law when it receives royal assent, probably on Friday, a Senate aide said.

GENEVA (AFP) - The United States is to accelerate its procedure for authorising anti-AIDS drugs and funding them from a 15-billion-dollar fund, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said.

The "accelerated review process" will apply to US and foreign pharmaceutical companies, including those that produce generic medicines in developing countries such as India, he said.

It aims to reduce the length of time needed for the authorisation of a medicine from a minimum of seven months to less than a month and a half.

"We are clearing the way to quickly deliver quality, life-saving HIV/AIDS drugs to people who desperately need them in devloping countries," Thompson told reporters.

He was speaking a day before the Geneva-based World Health Organisation opens its annual assembly here, where the fight against the growing scourge of AIDS will be one of the main issues.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will on Monday publish a handbook enabling pharmaceutical companies to prepare their requests for authorisation.

Laboratories given the FDA green light for financing by the American emergency AIDS relief plan will have to be inspected by FDA officials, said Lester Crawford, interim administrator for the agency.

But he hinted at the possibility that the FDA will grant user right exemptions, currently sought from companies seeking an authorisation. Such fees are about 500,000 dollars for a new medicine.

The new system will apply to "fixed-dose combination and co-packaged HIV therapy drugs", as well as "single ingredient drugs", both brand-name and generics, according to a statement by the US department of health.

The US administration's anti-AIDS plan, which amounts to 15 billion dollars over five years, was formally launched in February with the unblocking of an initial 350 million dollars.