Asia risks an AIDS epidemic of African proportions unless it prevents spread of the disease while transmission rates are still low, delegates to a United Nations conference said today.
"I think it's important that we not repeat Africa's mistake, and prevent spread of the disease in the early stages," Kim Hak-Su, executive secretary of the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asiaand the Pacific (ESCAP), told reporters.
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 70 per cent of all persons with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or HIV, the virus that causes it, while 6.4 million of Asia's three billion people are infected.
Public health officials cautioned against complacency in the region despite its currently low levels of infection.
There are clear warning signs that the epidemic could escalate in many countries (in Asia) if urgent action is not taken, Ms Kathleen Cravero, deputy executive director of the United Nations' AIDS programme, told the conference.
South Asia is already a hotbed of infection - the fastest growing epidemic outside Sub-Saharan Africa.India, Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand had worryingly high levels of infection, she said.
Social taboos and legal issues complicated the fight against the epidemic, delegates said. They said intravenous drug use and the sale of women and children into the sex trade were particular concerns.
"We had to accept that this epidemic was being driven by socio-cultural practices which no government wanted to admit existed," said Anand Panyarachun, who began Asia's first AIDS prevention scheme when he was prime minister of Thailand.
Conference delegates urged Africa and Asia to share information and strategies on fighting the virus.