BANGKOK, Dec 10 (AFP) - HIV-AIDS activists in Thailand, which is facing one of Asia's worst outbreaks of the deadly virus, have called for self-testing kits available over the Internet to be banned, a report said Sunday.

Health experts said they were concerned about the accuracy of the tests, and the prospect of people learning they were HIV positive without the benefit of proper counselling and other support mechanisms.

The head of Thailand's Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Wichai Chokewiwat, said the organisation was investigating the kits, which can be ordered over the Internet for 30 or 40 US dollars.

"Though the self-test kits could be used to test HIV, it's important that the patient be counselled before and after the test, in order to be prepared for the result," he told The Sunday Nation newspaper.

Senator Jon Ungpakorn of the AIDS Access Foundation urged the FDA to ban the product from the local market.

He told the newspaper that the home testing kits, which take just a few minutes to analyse a drop of blood, may not always be accurate.

People who returned an inaccurate negative test could be given a false sense of security and continue to engage in risky behaviour.

Alternatively, an incorrect positive test would cause despair or even suicide.

The severe social stigma surrounding the disease made it vital that patients were in a stable frame of mind before they learned they were HIV-positive, he added.

So far, one million Thais -- or one in 60 of the total population -- have been infected with HIV. Of that group, 300,000 have already died.

Although it has won praise for its efforts to check the spread of the disease, the country faces a new healthcare crisis as the hundreds of thousands who contracted the virus 10 years ago begin to develop full-blown AIDS.

As a result, Thailand has been at the forefront of efforts to push pharmaceutical companies into slashing the price of AIDS drugs so that developing countries can afford to use them.

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