JAKARTA, Dec 1 (AFP) - Countries across the globe marked World AIDS Day on Thursday as the United Nations warned that drastic action was needed to counter a global epidemic that was infecting record levels of people with HIV.
"The world faces a choice in the global response to AIDS," UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot said from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
"We can either continue to accept that global efforts will fail to keep pace with ever increasing numbers of HIV infections and AIDS related deaths, including more and more women and girls," he said.
"Or we can recognise the exceptional global threat posed by AIDS and embrace an equally exceptional response."
The number of people living with HIV in 2005 was 40.3 million, the highest figure ever, he said, as he urged countries to invest in HIV prevention as well as treatment and care.
The 18th World AIDS day was marked around the world with special concerts and the launch of new awareness programmes in major capitals.
Outgoing Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa warned that HIV/AIDS was "wiping out" whole generations in his east African country, urging behavioral changes to stop the spread of the killer disease.
"Let us not joke, AIDS is wiping us out," Mkapa said in a nationally televised address late Wednesday.
"Day after day, parents bury their children instead of children burying their parents," he said.
At least seven percent of adults in the country -- about 2 million people -- are infected with HIV, according to Tanzania Commission for AIDS, which says at least two million others have died from AIDS since 1983.
In Asia, Piot's call was boosted on the eve of the annual AIDS day, when a top Chinese official made the government's first official plea to citizens to get tested for HIV.
"We encourage our citizens to have HIV virus tests in qualified institutions," Health Minister Gao Qiang told a news conference Wednesday.
"We don't want to see the scenario... where a mother who got AIDS passes it to her child."
But activists warn China faces another AIDS crisis because of blood transfusions and on Thursday there were reports that two AIDS patients who travelled to Beijing to highlight their plight were forced to go home.
"A police officer with AIDS was taken away earlier this week and a retired school teacher was also taken back to Henan," said Wan Yanhai, director of the Beijing AIZHIXING Institute of Health Education, an AIDS non-government organisation (NGO).
Australia's government marked World AIDS Day by announcing a 10 million dollar (7.4 million US dollar) aid program to help battle the deadly disease in India over five years.
"Australia will fund a new initiative with UNAIDS and the government of India to reduce the risk and impact of the virus in the northeastern states of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Meghalaya," said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
India, with 5.1 million HIV/AIDS cases, is home to the second highest number of people with the virus, just behind South Africa.
A group of 30 walkers who sought to educate people about HIV/AIDS were set to arrive in New Delhi Thursday after spending the last year on a 6,800-kilometer (4,216 mile) trek that took them to 13 Indian states.
During their "Walk for Life," they travelled to over 300 cities, towns and villages, enduring searing heat, to promote AIDS awareness by using street theater, videos and counseling.
Piot said earlier this week he was spending World AIDS day in Indonesia to highlight the growing epidemic in Asia, where a decade ago, one in 10 of every new infection came from. Now one in five infections come from the region.
The director also warned that Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, was "the new frontline" in fighting the global AIDS battle and needed to drastically improve its response.
In Singapore, a biotechnology firm unveiled Thursday a diagnostic oral test kit that can detect the HIV virus in 20 minutes, the first time that the product has been made available in Asia since its launch in the United States last year.
The test kit works by detecting antibodies to the HIV virus through oral fluids and results are known within 20 minutes, the company said.
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