LUSAKA, Sept 13 (AFP) - Experts gathered in the Zambian capital on Monday counted the economic, social and human cost of AIDS in Africa, hearing that the pandemic could wipe out all the gains of the past century.

"Too much of Africa will enter the 21st century watching the gains of the 20th evaporate," Callisto Madavo, the vice president of the World Bank African region, warned an international conference on its second day here.

"The impact is all too comprehensible ... the protracted sickness, the fractured families, the weakening workforce, the relentless ritual of funerals, and the morgues that no longer even bother to close," Madavo said.

In the past 15 years, AIDs has claimed at least 11 million lives in Africa, where a further 22.5 million people are currently estimated to be infected with HIV or ill with AIDS.

According to the UN specialised UNAIDS agency, more than half of the new Human Immune-Deficiency Virus infections on the continent occur among people under the age of 25.

About 1.7 million young people become infected with HIV every year in Arica. In Zambia, the chances of a 15-year-old dying in consequence of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is 60 percent.

Zambia is hosting some 5,000 delegates from the continent and around the world, who are attending the 11th international conference on AIDS and sexually-transmitted diseases in Africa, which went into its second day on Monday.

Several of Monday's conference sessions have been dedicated to the economic, social and human impact of AIDS, which has overtaken both war and malaria as the leading cause of death in Africa.

The effect of the world's most infectious killer disease has been overwhelming and threatens the continent's future as it enters the new millenium.

Madavo said the epidemic was not only claiming lives, but changing the very nature of life in Africa.

"The damage that AIDS has done in the present is incalculable. Now it threatens millions of future," Madavo said.

"The impact that AIDS is already having on sub-Saharan Africa is catastrophic, and the scenario will worsen unless global leaders work together to invest more - much more - prevention efforts and programmes to address the multitude of social and economic problems that AIDS has brought," UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot said.

"AIDS now poses the foremost threat to development in Africa," he said.

Delegates were also considering the impact of the disease on education.

A University of Zambia professor, Michael Kelly, said fewer children were going to school because of illness and because families could not afford it as resources were diverted to caring for the sick.

The content of teaching programmes in schools was also being adapted to include HIV/AIDS.

"Almost every aspect of education is vulnerable to HIV/AIDS," said Kelly.

Businesses are already beginning to suffer. In Zimbabwe, life insurance premiums have quadrupled in just two years due to AIDS.

Yet in spite of all these chilling factors, only about one percent of Africans have access to the necessary care and support, including drugs for the most common AIDS-related infections.

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