"Our target is to reach 10 million orphans and assist them to get access to schools, have food, and meet other needs," said UNICEF's HIV/AIDS advisor Peter McDermott.

While there are currently 15 million children worldwide who have lost their parents to AIDS, that number is expected to reach 18 million by 2010.

"The real impact of AIDS is still coming...the number of deaths is going to increase in the next six years," said UNICEF monitoring information officer, Roeland Monasch.

Officials from the UN Children's Fund were attending a conference in Cape Town with their counterparts from the UN World Food Programme and the UNAIDS agency to draw up an action plan to help AIDS orphans worldwide.

The three-day conference is also attended by officials from 17 African countries, which are the most affected by the AIDS pandemic.

In 2003 alone, 5.2 million children became orphans in sub-Saharan Africa mainly due to the AIDS pandemic, according to UNICEF.

There are currently about 12.3 million AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.

McDermott said that UNICEF was meeting with donors and hoped to launch the campaign next year and that it will be a six-year effort to tackle the projected increase in the number of AIDS orphans until 2010.

The devastating effects of the pandemic are being compounded by drought in countries like southern African countries like Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Swaziland.

"Unfortunately during the times of draught and economic crisis, families are being put under stress to cope with the problem of orphans," said Zimbabwe's acting permanent secretary for public service, labour, and social services, Sydney Mhishi.

The pandemic is also taking a toll on the extended family.

"HIV/AIDS is eroding the structure of the extended family, which has acted as a safety net for orphans," said Swaziland Education Minister Constance Simelane.

But Monasch said that extended families were still looking after 90 percent of AIDS orphans and vulnerable children in Africa.

waziland has the highest HIV prevalence in the world at close to 40 percent.

Asia has the largest share of treatment centers for amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS) abusers in the world with 18 percent of the global total, the report said.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime lists amphetamines, notably methamphetamine, as the major problem drug in Thailand, the Philippines, Japan and South Korea.

UN data shows an estimated 3.3 million injecting drug users in Asia, and in a number of countries, this is largely driving the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Alcohol, cannabis, opium, heroin are the major drugs of abuse in India.

A report published by the UN drugs office and India's Ministry of Social Justice estimates 62.5 million users of alcohol, 8.75 million of cannabis, two million of opiates and 600,000 of hypnotics or sedatives in that country.

The report concluded that between 17 percent and 25 percent of these people could be classified as dependent users who need urgent treatment.

South East Asia is "plagued" by high levels of ATS and injecting drug users, as well as a dramatic increase in alcohol consumption, according to the WHO's regional director Dr. Samlee Plianbangchang.

"A recent trend is increase in glue, petrol and solvent sniffing. A disturbing observation is that more and more young people are being drawn into this devastating habit," he said.

"Many developing countries in the region are experiencing rapid social and economic changes, resulting in the greater availability of a wide range of different psychoactive substances -- everything from tobacco to illicit drugs," said Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific.

This has given rise to an increase in associated health and social problems, including substance dependence, he added.

The WHO report Neuroscience of Psychoactive Substance Use and Dependence summarises the latest scientific data on the role of the brain in substance dependence and is the first of its type produced by the WHO.

Citing the rapid advances in neuroscience, it concludes that substance dependence is as much a disorder of the brain as any other neurological or psychiatric disorder.

According to UN data an estimated 200 million people globally use one or more types of illicit substances.

The most common is cannabis, followed by amphetamines, cocaine and the opioids.

Illicit substance use is more prevalent among males than females, much more so than cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption, the UN drugs office says.

Substance abuse is also more prevalent among young people than older groups.

UN data show that 2.7 percent of the total global population, and 3.9 percent of people 15 years and above, used cannabis at least once in 2000 and 2001.

"While the use of traditional illicit drugs such as opiates continues to increase in the western Pacific region, the wider use of drugs such as amphetamine-type stimulants and ketamine is emerging very rapidly," according to Wang Xiangdong, regional adviser on mental health and substance abuse in the WHO regional Office in Manila.

"Illicit drug use accounts for about 0.6 percent of the burden of disease in the region," he said.

"These drug-use behaviours are highly related to HIV/AIDS infections. For example, reported illicit drug users in China number more than one million, and about 70 percent of HIV infections are related to drug use."

The WHO says that while illicit substance use is a major concern, the main global health burden is due to licit substances such as alcohol and tobacco.

In 2001 alcohol and tobacco accounted for 5.5 percent and 4.1 percent of the global health burden respectively.

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand handed over a million condoms and anti-retroviral drugs to Myanmar to help combat a growing AIDS crisis under the military-run regime.

The UN told a world AIDS conference held here in July that Myanmar's health infrastructure could not cope with the epidemic, with the number of HIV cases increasing by nearly 50 percent in the last two years.

Some 620,000 Myanmarese aged 15 to 49 are believed to be living with HIV/AIDS, driven by 20-30 percent infection rates of sex workers. Nearly three-quarters of injecting drug users also test positive in some areas, the UN said.

The anti-retroviral drugs handed over by Thailand during a visit by officials to Yangon were enough to treat 200 people for a year, Thai officials said.

Myanmar has targeted treatment for 2,000 people by the end of this year and 12,000 by late 2005.

Thailand, lauded for its anti-AIDS programme of the 1990s, is one of the key production centres for "copycat" cheap HIV drugs along with Brazil and India.

The new figure is based on a survey in South African prenatal clinics released late Wednesday and drew sharp criticism from a top AIDS lobby group and opposition politicians.

The survey which is used every year to project AIDS infection rates in the general population, said it estimated that some 5.6 million people were infected with HIV by the end of 2003 -- 300,000 more than the year before.

"HIV prevalence among pregnant women in 2003 was observed to be 27.9 percent in comparison with a prevalence of 26.5 percent for 2002," said the report on HIV and syphilis prevalence at prenatal clinics.

"In addition, over the recent five years despite the observed prevalence being high, the trend remained at a relatively lower rate. These findings in general seem to suggest that the epidemic is slowly stabilising," the document stated.

But AIDS activist Mark Heywood, spokesman for the influential Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) lobby group, disagreed.

"It doesn't mean the epidemic is slowly stabilising at all. The only reason they (the government) are trying to say that is because they are trying to give credence to their claims that they are managing the epidemic effectively," he told AFP.

"An epidemic that has been brought under control does not stabilise with a year-on-year growth. And if it should stabilise at these high rates, it will be very worrying," Heywood added.

He said people were dying of AIDS in "quite large numbers".

"That would normally have a downward pull on these statistics, and despite the deaths of many women of child-bearing age we still have high rates. This is very problematic."

The report added that AIDS was losing ground among teenagers since 1999, except in 2003 when the prevalence rate went up again by one percent -- from 14.8 to 15.8 percent.

The health ministry described the increase as "marginal" in its report.

"Stability observed particularly among teenagers and the non-significant difference between the national figures for HIV prevalence for 2002 to 2003 all point to an epidemic in stabilisation phase," the report concluded.

The main opposition Democratic Alliance slammed Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for releasing the report "in the quietest possible way".

"The figures continue to increase, and that is not 'stabilising'. The report proves the government's prevention campaign is not succeeding," DA health spokesman Ryan Coetzee said.

South Africa has one of the highest AIDS rates in the world.

The government early this year finally bowed under pressure from rights groups and started rolling out a national treatment programme at state hospitals but it has been criticised for its slow progress.

"In 2003, up to 70,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses, another 75,000 were new infections, while 73,000 got full blown AIDS, but all this was on the declining side," Apulli told AFP.

"In 2001, at least 100,000 people were dying every year from the disease," he added.

Apulli was reacting to a report by a non-governmental organisation, National Guidance and Empowerment Network of people living with HIV/AIDS (NGEN), which claimed on Tuesday that the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Uganda may be nearly three times as high as official figures suggest.

NGEN boss Major Rubaramira Ruranga, who says he has been living with the virus for the last 21 years, alleged after conducting research in districts across Uganda that the prevalence rates were found to be as high as 30 percent in some areas, and that access to anti-retrovirals was poor.

Apulli dismissed the claims, saying they were based on unscientific research.

He said the country had 22 ante-natal sites where blood samples are taken from pregnant mothers, analyzed and computed and these give the prevalence average rate of 6.1 percent.

About a million people are infected with the HIV virus) that causes AIDS, while almost a similar number have died since the disease was first diagnosed some 22 years ago.

Some 120,000 Ugandans are currently are in need of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), but only 25,000 of them currently have access to them.

Using a hand-held camera, Harry, third in line to the British throne, shot video footage during a gap year visit to the mountainous southern African kingdom in February, which was screened by Britain's ITV television channel on Sunday night.

The fund, set up in London on Wednesday at the request of Prince Harry, will help four home-based care projects in Lesotho and other charity organisations, said Mark Watchorn, Britain's deputy high commissioner to Lesotho.

"This included the Mants'ase Children's Home, where he spent much of his time," Watchorn told AFP.

Harry, 19, spent eight weeks in Lesotho, helping to build a clinic, bridges and erecting fences while shooting parts of the documentary "The Forgotten Kingdom: Prince Harry in Lesotho."

Lesotho is one of Africa's poorest countries, with a gross domestic product of some 451 dollars per head per year and an HIV/AIDS infection rate of around 31 percent of the population of 1.8 million.

"Prince Harry is able to highlight the issues faced by a country like Lesotho which would otherwise receive little or no public attention," the British Red Cross said.

"The generous response to the Red Cross appeal so far shows that he can help inform and motivate the public about a subject like HIV/AIDS," it said in a statement.

At a meeting with the press in Lesotho, the young prince made an impassionate plea for aid to "little-known" Lesotho, where AIDS has been declared a national emergency.

"It's recognition. People in England do not really know a lot about Lesotho. But it needs their help. There are all kinds of needs here," the prince told the press.

Harry's late mother Diana, Princess of Wales, was famed for her AIDS charity work, breaking taboos through her close contact with patients who contracted the illness.

AIDS has been declared a national emergency in the poor and mountainous country where life expectancy has dropped to 36.