"Some flee from place to place with the constant threat of exposure as 'carriers' of the 'plague'," said the report, based on more than 30 interviews with HIV/AIDS sufferers, police, drug users, and AIDS outreach workers in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Yunnan province.

"Unable to gain access to state services because they lack city residence permits, they are barely able to scrape together the means to purchase the vials of remedies sold by unscrupulous doctors and even street hucksters to 'cure AIDS' until, finally, they huddle alone on their beds in rented rooms to wait for death."

The group credited the government for showing greater willingness to deal with AIDS after years of silence, from small-scale prevention projects to behind-the-scenes efforts by leading reformists.

"Yet in practice, Beijing has thus far done remarkably little," the report said.

It made sweeping recommendations, including training for health workers nationwide, legislation to protect sufferers from discrimination and an end to the arbitrary detention of drug users in forced treatment centers.

It also appealed to the government to launch a full probe to punish officials for shoddy blood collection schemes in seven provinces and compensate and treat masses of people who contracted HIV, the virus causing AIDS, because of them.

Some activists estimate one million people were infected in Henan province alone from schemes which paid farmers for extracting their plasma and pumped the remainder back into them from tainted blood pools.

"This (SARS) was a wake-up call in bringing to the fore the inadequacies of our health systems," he said Thursday.

"How I wish the world would respond to HIV/AIDS in a similar manner."

Chituwo said in a radio interview that SARS was not only a public health issue, but also an economic issue.

"It is obvious that there has to be a direct economic benefit for the world to respond in the manner it has," he said.

"We would like to urge them that such problems are all over the world and although our economies are weak, human lives are human lives."

Edugie Abebe, the director of public health in Nigeria, told the conference that the continent was very lucky to have been spared the effects of SARS.

"Otherwise most of us in the room ... would have been in quarantine," she said in comments quoted by the SAPA news agency.

"This is just a teaser of what might come in future. We have a looming epidemic of influenza that might come up any time."

The rapid spread of the pneumonia-like virus ravaged Asian countries as well as the Canadian city of Toronto earlier this year, killing hundreds of people and inflicting significant damage on key sectors of the world economy, notably travel and tourism.

According to WHO, Africa reported only three suspected cases of SARS -- in Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia.

"Health systems depend most of all on skilled and dedicated personnel, and here we face big challenges, particularly in this region which, on top of everything else, suffers heavy losses to the brain drain," he said.

"It is, above all, good staff that will enable us to reach the 'three by five,' and achieve the (UN) Millennium Development Goals, and everyone is short of resources," he said.

A WHO report released on Monday said half of Africa's population did not have access to existing essential medicines, while many more were denied new medicines for treating common diseases like malaria and HIV.

"Only 50,000 of the 4.5-million people who need antiretroviral therapy have access to treatment despite significant reductions in cost," the WHO's annual report for 2002 of the regional director said.

Lee said the WHO would also work closely with countries on innovative methods to train, deploy and supervise health workers, particularly on community and primary health care level.

He also welcomed a World Trade Organisation agreement to allow poor countries access to cheap medicines, saying it would benefit the "three by five" plan.

"Based on this, we can work further, so every person who needs medicines can have access to them at an affordable price," he later told journalists.

The landmark agreement which was announced in Geneva on Saturday will allow poor countries that do not have their own pharmaceutical industries to import cheaper "generic" copies of patented medicines to fight killer diseases.

The agreement also advocates huge increases in aid for poor countries.

Habib Doutoum, interim social affairs commissioner of the African Union, said countries to which health professionals moved from poorer states should provide some compensation for the loss of staff.

At present, there were only 16 doctors per 100,000 of the continent's population, he said.

"Africa's trained health professionals have become a free commodity for developed countries," Doutoum said in comments quoted by the SAPA news agency.

Doutoum said counter-measures, like compensation from receiving countries and incentives to retain such people, were necessary.

South Africa's Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota -- who opened the meeting on behalf of President Thabo Mbeki, who is in Malaysia -- said Africa's over-burdened health care systems were "squeaking under new and re-emerging epidemics".

"These new diseases are putting a further strain on our health systems," he said.

"There is no hope that we can compete with the kind of salaries that are offered by these rich countries.

"Although everyone has a right to sell one's labour to the highest bidder, this is one of the negative implications of globalisation that is destabilising our economies and in particular our health systems."

According to the WHO, 10 million children in low- and middle-income countries die every year before reaching the age of five.

Seven million of those deaths are from five preventable and treatable conditions -- pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles and malnutrition.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where many people subsist on less than one dollar a day, 30 million people are suffering from AIDS, with 2.4 million deaths in 2001, according to UN figures.

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - About 99 percent of AIDS sufferers in dire need of life-saving treatment in Africa lack access to antiretroviral therapy, the World Health Organisation said in its annual 2002 report.

"The HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to spread relentlessly in the African region," states the document, released at a continuing five-day meeting in Johannesburg of the WHO regional committee for Africa.

Despite a drop in the cost of AIDS drugs, only half of Africa's population have access to essential medicines to treat killer diseases, while about one percent of terminally ill AIDS patients can get drugs.

"HIV/AIDS interventions for prevention, life-saving treatment and support among Africans is still low. Only 50,000 of the 4.5 million people who need anti-retroviral therapy have access to treatment despite significant reductions in cost," the report said.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States signed up to a cooperation agreement with the Netherlands as part of the fight against AIDS, the White House announced.

US President George W. Bush and Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende "agreed that progress in fighting the global tragedy of HIV/AIDS requires more and better coordination among donor and recipient governments, international organizations, NGOs and the private sector," a joint statement said.

The two countries will cooperate in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care in countries where both have significant activities including those that receive "special focus" in Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

The plan is to be launched in Rwanda and Ghana and may expand to Zambia, Ethiopia, and possibly Sudan pending the signing of a peace agreement, the statement said.

The two presidents met for breakfast Wednesday as part of a two-day visit by the Balkenende to the United States.

CHICAGO (AFP) - The Female Health Company, the manufacturer of the world's only female condom, said it had signed a deal with an Indian company to market and distribute its product on the subcontinent.

The deal with Hindustan Latex Ltd, India's leading male condom manufacturer, paves the way for the US company to broaden distribution of its product in India -- a country where approximately four million people are infected with the HIV virus.

The two companies have been collaborating since late 2001 on pilot projects involving the distribution of free condoms to women in the states of Kerala, Andrah Pradesh and Maharashtra at health clinics run by aid agencies.

Preliminary feedback from the acceptability studies was "favourable," said Mary Ann Leeper, president of the Chicago-based company.

Leeper said Wednesday she expects to ship up to one million units initially, most of which will probably be distributed to state health agencies and aid agencies.

"This isn't a product you can just put on the shelf. It requires an education program," she explained.

In 2002, the company sold 12.5 million condoms, approximately 85 percent of which were shipped to countries in the developing world, including Brazil, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana.

The condom, the only female-initiated barrier method disease prevention, is marketed as a tool to protect women against sexually-transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - The Ethiopian government urged its people to step up their efforts in the fight against the spread of AIDS, saying the disease was spreading at an alarming rate in the Horn of Africa country.

"The pandemic was discovered not long ago, but the rate at which it is spreading is alarming and a matter of concern," the information ministry said in a statement.

AIDS was undermining the development efforts of the country, the ministry said.

The government has established a national secretariat charged with coordinating the anti-AIDS campaign, but Friday's statement was the first time authorities publicly sounded the alarm against the spread of the disease.

An estimated three million Ethiopians are infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, according to figures from UNAIDS from the year 2000. More than a million have died of the disease since it was first reported in the country in 1987.

Up to 7.3 percent of Ethiopia's adult population are estimated to be HIV-positive. Almost a million children in the Horn of Africa country are AIDS orphans.

SOFIA (AFP) - The French doctor who first isolated the HIV virus said that a hospital AIDS epidemic in Libya was probably caused by poor hygiene, and not by the seven medical workers who are on trial on charges of deliberately spreading the disease.

Professor Luc Montagnier spoke in a Bulgarian radio interview on the same day he testified before a Libyan court in the trial of the five Bulgarian nurses and two doctors -- one Bulgarian, one Palestinian -- who face the death penalty for allegedly injecting tainted blood products into 393 children.

Montagnier said the AIDS outbreak at a children's hospital in the northern Libyan town of Benghazi had most likely begun in 1997, before the arrival of the five nurses.

AIDS-related diseases have already killed at least 23 of the children at the Al-Fateh hospital.

"This tragedy is probably due to negligence," Montagnier told Bulgarian radio, adding that the virus had probably been passed on by "materials and syringes that had not been sterilised".

The French professor added: "This can happen not only in this hospital, but in many others, particularly paediatric hospitals, because children are more vulnerable to infection, even by very small quantities of blood."

Italian AIDS researcher Vittorio Colizzi, who co-wrote a report Montagnier submitted to the Libyan authorities in April, also testified on Wednesday before the court in Benghazi, east of Tripoli.

The lawyer representing the seven medical workers, who were arrested in 1998, said in a radio interview that the two professors' testimony was "solid and convincing" and would be of great use to the defence when it presents its arguments on Monday and Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An aspiring diplomat who was turned down for a job in the US Foreign Service because he is HIV-positive sued Secretary of State Colin Powell for discrimination in federal court.

The suit, filed by the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on behalf of Lorenzo Taylor, alleges that Powell and the State Department illegally refused to hire him because of his medical status.

In addition, the defense fund, which represents gay and lesbian interests across the United States, accuses Powell of hypocrisy for rejecting Taylor from the job after speaking out publicly against discrimination of HIV-positive or AIDS infected employees.

Taylor, who has been HIV-positive for 18 years and has never been incapicitated by the condition, is fluent in three languages and easily passed the State Department's notoriously difficult written and oral examinations, according to Lambda.

"Theres no question that Lorenzo Taylor is extremely qualified to do this work and that he would do it well," said Jonathan Givner, a lawyer for the New York-based group.

"But because he has HIV, none of that matters to the federal government," he said. "(Taylor) was rejected by the State Department because he has HIV."

The suit, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, charges that the State Department is violating US law prohibiting the federal government from discriminating against people with disabilities.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment on the lawsuit because it is a pending legal matter.

But it is the department's policy not to employ HIV-positive applicants because of Foreign Service requirements that diplomats be able to serve in any country in the world, including those with little or no health care facilities and those which bar entry to people with the virus or AIDS.

Diplomats who become HIV-positive after their employment are accomodated by the department and are not affected by the restrictions.

A senior department official said the policy was based on the need for foreign service officers to have "worldwide availability" to be fair to the entire diplomatic corps, many of whom serve in difficult nations with substandard health care.

"It's not so much a matter of their ability to do the job," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity. "We recognize that people who are HIV-positive have the ability to do the job.

"But is it fair to the entire corps to have some people come in who can only take assignments in a limited number of places and other people therefore get shunted off to maybe less desirable places without the same quality of medical facilities?" the official said.

The Lambda fund argues that foreign service applicants should be assessed case-by-case to determine their individual medical status and fitness for overseas employment.

It also pointed out that in June 2002, Powell had personally called for private sector companies, particularly those in AIDS ravaged African nations, not discriminate against HIV-positive employees.

"The Secretary of State recognizes that HIV discrimination in the workplace is a problem around the country and the world and todays lawsuit shows that its a problem in his own workplace," Givner said.

HANOI (AFP) - A meeting between the Laos government and a group of 150 international donors ended in Vientiane with a warning on the risk of the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.

"So far, Laos has avoided massive infection rates. However, it may not remain like this," Finn Reske-Nielsen, the UN Development Programme's representative in Laos, told the assembly Friday morning.

"Social and economic contacts with neighbouring countries are increasing and with that, so are the risks (of AIDS' spread). Three countries that border us have prevalence rates exceeding 1 percent among 15- to 49-year olds," he added.

The round-table meeting was the eighth such consultation that the government has held with the donor community. Foreign embassies, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations working in Laos attended.

According to a participant, the meeting ended up without any aid pledges but the international community approved a National Poverty Eradication Programme (NPEP) set up by the government.

"The United Nations Country Team welcomes the NPEP as the government's major instrument to combat poverty. Its production has been no minor achievement," Reske-Nielsen said in his speech.

"The NPEP addresses the HIV and AIDS issue as a medical problem and health issue. We feel, however, that HIV/AIDS is a social and development problem, and that is should not be solely dealt with as a medical problem or health issue".

"UNDP, therefore, strongly recommends that the strategy to combat HIV/AIDS be changed -- so the government pursues a more multi-sectoral approach," he said.

Last May, Dr. Nafis Sadik, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's top adviser on the killer disease, urged the government and aid organisations in the impoverished country to work to remove bigotry associated with HIV/AIDS.

This, she said, caused discrimination against those most vulnerable to contracting HIV, such as "sex workers, homosexuals, migrants, lowly paid and unempowered women, and adolescents".