BANGKOK, Nov 12 (AFP) - The AIDS virus will cost Thailand up to nine billion dollars in health expenses by the year 2000, a United Nations expert told a seminar here Friday.

Health experts warned the economic and social impact of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic will begin to hit home next year, with a dramatic jump in death rates.

Dr Ghazi Farooq of the United Nations Population Fund said the cost of HIV and AIDS had reached staggering proportions.

"The direct cost of HIV/AIDS in Thailand is estimated to be between seven to nine billion dollars by the Year 2000," he said, adding the indirect costs such as lost productivity were much higher.

"It reduces the quantity and quality of labour and therefore the gross national product," he said, repeating a warning by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad that AIDS had the potential to derail economic recovery in the region.

"It decreases the volume and rate of savings and creates a vicious circle of less productive employment, lower incomes, lower growth and lower levels of GNP (Gross National Product)," he said.

He said AIDS had already caused a 16 percent jump in death rates in Thailand alone, particulary among young people who should have been at the peak of their productivity.

Death rates as a result of AIDS had lept 12 percent in Myanmar and a 10 percent in Cambodia, he said.

Other international experts at the meeting said on average it took a decade for HIV infection to develop into the fatal disease of AIDS, and death rates would rise dramatically in the year 2000.

Gilles Pumerol of the World Health Organisation (WHO) predicted AIDS fatalities in Asia would jump from 134,000 in 1995 to 500,000 next year.

The bulk of the deaths, he added, would occur in India, followed by Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia.

"Most people who develop AIDS in Asia die within a couple of months because there is a lack of treatment and facilities," he said.

"Dealing with the tens of thousands of people who are going to get sick and die next year is going to be an increasing problem for a number of countries," he added.

AIDS attacks the body's defense system and is almost always fatal. No known cure has been discovered, although Western patients now have access to expensive drugs which slow the development of the disease.

The disease is transmitted by sexual contact and the sharing of needles by drug users and can be transmitted by a pregnant woman to her foetus.

Thailand is hosting the "Inter-Country Meeting of Parliamentarians and Specialists on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases in East And South East Asia."

The conference, which began Thursday, runs to November 14.

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