UNITED NATIONS, June 25 (AFP) - Sub-Saharan Africa has felt the devastating impact from AIDS more than any other region of the world, with 25.3 million people there infected with HIV -- 70 percent of the 36.1 million cases globally, UNAIDS data from 2000 show.

Women comprise more than half of those who test positive for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus; more than one million children under 14 are also infected.

In 2000, around 2.4 million Africans were felled by AIDS and AIDS-related illnesses, an increase of around 200,000 since 1999, and 11 times the number of people killed in the various conflicts on the continent in that year, including the 17-year civil war in Sudan.

Adults in southern Africa are particularly hard-hit by the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. One in five Namibians and Zambians are infected; one in four in Zimbabwe and Swaziland share the same fate.

In Lesotho, 23 percent of adults are HIV positive and in Botswana, the worst-ravaged country on the planet, 35.8 percent of adults carry the virus that can become full-blown AIDS, for which there is no cure.

There are 4.7 million South Africans living with HIV, or one in five adults. According to 2000 data, South Africa tops the list of eight countries worldwide that are home to more than one million people living with AIDS.

Ethiopia is second with three million, followed by Nigeria (2.7 million), Kenya (2.1 million), Zimbabwe (1.5 million), Tanzania (1.3 million), Mozambique (1.2 million) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (1.1 million).

According to a UN study published in February, between now and 2010, AIDS will reduce life expectancy by 20 years in the African countries most badly impacted by the disease. It has the potential also to wipe out an entire generation of young people and leave hundreds of thousands of orphaned children.

Compounding concerns, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization estimate that the number of tuberculosis cases in Africa will double in the next 10 years because of the increased transmissions of AIDS and a shortage of resources devoted to tuberculosis.

Each year, the incidence of tuberculosis rises by 10 percent in Africa, due largely in part to HIV. The continent in 1999 reported two million new cases of TB, two thirds of which were also reported in people infected by HIV.

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