The AIDS epidemic, which has killed 25 million people, is the disease of globalisation, the director of the joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Mr Peter Piot, said yesterday.
"There has never been such a prolonged, worldwide epidemic", he said yesterday, after launching a report that warned that up to 68 million more people could die of AIDS by 2020.
About 55 million Africans will die prematurely from AIDS by 2020, as the disease grows there in the absence of any form of mass treatment, UNAIDS said in its report for 2002.
The two-yearly snapshot of the HIV/AIDS pandemic warned that, far from reaching their natural limit, high prevalence rates on the African continent - the highest in the world - are rising, especially among young people.
"Since the beginning of the epidemic 20 years ago, more than 60 million people have been infected. By definition, they are all connected, through sex, injected drug use or because they inherited it from their mothers," Mr Piot said.
He said the spread of the AIDS epidemic was particularly difficult to halt.
"It has a very long, healthy incubation period," he explained. "You can be healthy for 10 or even 20 years but capable of infecting others." In addition, he said, "AIDS is affecting young adults, people who normally do not get ill, but who are contracting the disease because they are sexually active."
The large number of young adult deaths had a ripple effect on society unlike other epidemics, he went on. It broke up families, left a huge number of orphans, and destroyed the most economically productive lives.
Another factor unique to AIDS was the stigma and the shame which hampered leadership, Mr Piot said.
"When I talk to business leaders, they do not want to hear about AIDS," he said, "they are afraid it might affect their image."
Lack of candour in some countries also meant that no reliable figures were available for HIV infection rates.
The latest report contains no data for about 20 countries, half of them Arab states: Syria, Saudi Arabia, the six Gulf emirates, Tunisia and Djibouti.
Mr Piot said he felt confident about the quality of reporting from most African countries, but there were methodological difficulties with China and India.
"The sample size is not large enough," he said, noting that a 1 per cent increase in infections in either of the Asian giants would correspond to about 10 million people.
Asked whether scientific knowledge of AIDS had increased in recent years, Mr Piot said there had been advances at the molecular level.
But far more resources were going into the research necessary if a vaccine were to be produced, he said.
"That does not mean we are going to see one, but at least we're trying."