AIDS pandemic on verge of explosion

This may lead to many new cases and threaten the world economy, warns UNAIDS. In pics

The number of HIV infections in China, India and Russia is on the verge of exploding into a crisis that could lead to tens of millions of new cases and threaten the stability of the world economy, the head of the UN AIDS programme has said.

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Meanwhile, the number of cases in other Asian countries, such as Indonesia, is growing quickly, and swift action is needed to stop the spread of AIDS across the continent, Peter Piot said at a conference on the AIDS epidemic in Washington on Tuesday.

"There is something new and ominous in the course of this epidemic," he said. "When the very act essential to furthering the human race also threatens it, then we are in a very dangerous place."

Piot called for intensified international efforts to fight AIDS in Asia and Eastern Europe, without harming efforts to stem the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, where it is already an epidemic.

"Early investment is everything. Either we pay now or pay later, and the price rises each minute we wait," he said.

The Chinese government estimates some 840,000 people were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in 2003, but international AIDS experts say the actual number is much higher.

The World Health Organisation has predicted that number could grow to 10 million by 2010 without strong measures to address the epidemic.

India, where an estimated 5.1 million people were infected with HIV in 2003, already has the world's second-highest number of cases after South Africa.