KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 24 (AFP) - Corruption, professional jealousies and discrimination are hampering the fight against AIDS in the Asia-Pacific region, speakers told an international conference Sunday.

Fawzia Rasheed, a scientist and adviser on AIDS to the Bangladeshi government, gave a generally gloomy assessment of work to counter AIDS in the region over the past two years since the last conference in Manila.

"We can't say we have made any difference in terms of an impact on the epidemic," she told the 5th international congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, adding that many countries were having problems providing safe blood supplies and condoms.

She said AIDS workers in the region complained that some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) liked to keep their successes secret and some NGOs in South Asia existed only on paper. Others were known to be corrupt.

Apart from Thailand, Australia and Malaysia, AIDS work in the region was completely dependent on outside financing.

There was distrust, competition and secrecy among some donor agencies.

"A professional culture has evolved where only mutual congratulation is in order. Those who express concern are asked to go off the record."

Rasheed said AIDS workers had a duty to address worst practices as well as identify the best national programs. "For many countries in the region it's worst practices that prevent us moving forward."

David Stephens, who has been HIV-positive since 1983, said living in Australia gave him "privileged status" not available to the vast majority of sufferers in the region.

He said understanding the impact of the epidemic in Asia was complicated by the fact that "for the most part the experience of people with HIV/AIDS in this region is an experience of silence."

While more than seven million people in the region were estimated to be infected, the vast majority had been untested and were unaware of their infection.

Many of those who were aware were reluctant to speak of their experiences "due to the potentially massive danger to themselves, their families and loved ones."

Stephens cited community hostility such as in Hong Kong, where victims trying to attend a clinic had been harassed by local residents.

He described discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS as "the other epidemic." Examples in Asia included discrimination against the children of infected parents, mandatory HIV testing before employment or in the workplace, denial of housing, restrictions on freedom of movement, the deportation of migrants and quarantine.

"I am able to speak to you today because I have access to the drugs that are keeping me alive," Stephens said. But more than 90 percent of those infected lived in the developing world and only a fraction of them had access to anti-viral drugs.

"While HIV/AIDS moves slowly into the mainstream of health care in the developed world it veers out of control in the rest of the world."

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