HONG KONG, Dec 1 (AFP) - Asian nations still bury their heads in the sand over AIDS, with official case numbers revealing only a fraction of the true picture, according to health workers.

While many of the region's governments want to be seen to be taking action to halt the spread of the disease, few seem willing to admit the scale of the problem.

With pink buses, rock bands and free condoms all used to increase awareness on World AIDS Day here, onlookers could be forgiven for thinking the battle against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was being won.

Statistics offer a starker account.

In China, where experts have long been warning of an impending catastrophe in the face of official denial, Beijing is only now beginning to begrudgingly admit there may be a problem.

The China Daily said the number of confirmed cases of Human Immune-deficiency Virus (HIV) or AIDS in China was 20,711, but admitted that even medical experts' estimates of 500,000 at the end of 1999 were conservative.

"China is on a fast track to having a big epidemic," said Edwin Judd, China representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

"Unless there is really substantial action in the next three or four years the real danger is that we will have 10 million cases of HIV or AIDS in the year 2010 or worse."

The majority of China's HIV carriers are in the countryside where unmonitored blood selling has contributed to a rapid spread of AIDS.

In one notorious case, tests indicate around 65 percent of the population of Wenlou, a village in the central province of Henan, have been infected with the virus through blood donations.

In Vietnam, where a fleet of 20 pink buses took to the streets of Ho Chi-Min City and Hanoi to distribute free condoms, official figures are also widely disputed.

According to the government, there have been 2,371 AIDS-related deaths in Vietnam with a further 27,000 registered as HIV positive. But UN figures suggest four times that many people have the virus.

In Thailand, which has one of the worst HIV/AIDS problems in Asia -- one in 60 of the population are infected -- the day was marked by low key events including a charity photo exhibition and late night television broadcast.

Likewise in Cambodia -- where, on one island, one in four policemen, 41 per cent of prostitutes and 10 per cent of military personnel have HIV -- the day's events were restircted to understated special education programmes and a small carnival.

In Pakistan, another clash between official and independent statistics has lead to confusion over the number of AIDS suffers.

The National AIDS Programme's latest figures show 11 new AIDS cases and 65 new HIV cases were reported this year, bringing the total recorded HIV/AIDS cases since 1986 to 1,699.

United Nations and government figures put the number of HIV/AIDS cases closer to 74,000, with widespread intravenous drug abuse, poor education about safe sex and prostitution blamed for the spread of the disease.

In neighboring India, however, the most industrialised state, Maharashtra, home to a large number of the country's 3.5 million HIV carriers, took the step of announcing it plans to recruit its captains of industry in the fight against AIDS.

"We want to get commitment from businesses. We want them to put in place full-fledged systems to tackle sexually transmitted diseases among their employees," said Medha Gadgil, the state's topmost AIDS control official.

In other parts of the region the day was used to highlight a lack of awareness over the virus.

In Malaysia, the official AIDS Council said some 35,000 HIV/AIDS sufferers were too afraid to reveal they had been infected for fear of the reaction from their communities.

Similar concerns were expressed in Taiwan where the United Daily News Friday highlighted the fact that many AIDS sufferers are denied medical treatment.

And in Singapore, activists said growing numbers of AIDS sufferers were being left homeless and without treatment because of discrimination against them.

The Action for Aids group there said direct government subsidies for AIDS and HIV sufferers in the affluent city-state were virtually non-existent.

Meanwhile in Nepal, Health Minister Ram Baran Yadav said if men acted with more self-restraint it would help curb the spread of the disease, which had so far killed 142 people in the kingdom.

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