BEIJING, Dec 1 (AFP) - The AIDS crisis spreading across Asia was accorded official recognition from China to Afghanistan Sunday as countries marked World AIDS Day.
Marches and awareness campaigns were held across the region as Asia begins to acknowledge its soaring AIDS rates.
India, with an estimated four million HIV-infected individuals, is second only to South Africa in terms of absolute numbers. And in China, the world's most populous country, the central government has acknowledged one million cases of AIDS and HIV, up from 600,000 last year.
The UN has suggested, however, that the number of Chinese infected with HIV could soar from an estimated 1.5 million to more than 10 million by the end of the decade.
China has about three years to contain infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, which official estimates suggest is increasing by 30 percent per year.
"At the moment we know the epidemic is still growing very quickly and it will continue," said Rodney Hatfield, the Thailand-based deputy regional director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
"The biggest thing is for everyone to accept this is a major problem that can actually, eventually, if not handled properly, interrupt China's economic growth."
Criticized for its failure to properly respond to a spiralling HIV crisis, China marked World AIDS Day with awareness-building events in 13 cities. On Saturday, the government premiered a television documentary on HIV/AIDS prevention in a rural village on the outskirts of Beijiing.
University students gathered at the capital's Great Hall of the People for a government-backed event to increase awareness of the Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, and were addressed by two AIDS sufferers. It was the first time AIDS patients had made a public address inside the important meeting hall.
"I really hope all the government departments will give us support and care and help us to buy medicine to continue living," said one of the men, who identified himself only by his surname Wei.
UN officials applauded China for making "significant" progress in the past two years -- from finally admitting it has a problem with HIV/AIDS to releasing more realistic estimates of the number of sufferers and raising awareness.
Beijing-based UNICEF senior project officer Ray Yip said the central government also needed campaigns to eliminate the stigma attached to the illness, for which there is no known cure.
But the social stigma still attached to AIDS is not endemic to China.
Jahnabi Goswami, speaking at a rally in northeastern India attended by thousands of people, said "society at large is very cruel to people living with AIDS."
"We need help and mental support more than anything else."
Goswami, the first woman in Assam to publicly declare her HIV status, is one of more than 100,000 HIV-positive patients who live in India's seven northeastern states, where the disease has spread rapidly due to the region's acute drug problem.
The states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura border the heroin-producing "Golden Triangle" of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand and has high rates of intravenous drug use -- a key cause of HIV infection here.
The states account for less than three percent of India's one billion-plus population but are home to more than 30 percent of the country's total intravenous drug users, according to estimates.
"AIDS has become a real threat to the northeast and unless checked, our future generations will fail to see the light of the day," Assam Health Minister Bhumidhar Barman said.
However word from Thailand was that infection rates were slowing from 150,000 new cases in 1992 to 25,000 last year.
"It's manageable," Mechai Viravaidya, a high-profile AIDS activist in Thailand, told AFP. "But it means we have to do a lot more public education."
International assistance is crucial to stop the potentially catastrophic spread of AIDS into once-isolated Afghanistan, the United Nations said Sunday.
Returning refugees who may be carrying sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), increased intravenous drug use in the country's south and prostitution could make Afghanistan a hotbed of HIV/AIDS infection.
"In Afghanistan we do not know the exact situation of the epidemic but we know HIV is present," said Nigel Fisher, the UN deputy special representative for Afghanistan, in a Kabul address to mark World AIDS Day.
"Today signals a fresh start for Afghanistan. The openness and willingness to act early to ensure the epidemic does not reach catastrophic proportions is obvious."
Ending discrimination against HIV carriers and high-risk groups such as sex workers and intravenous drug users was the best way to control the disease, which the World Health Organisation estimates has infected 100 people in Afghanistan so far this year.
"Discrimination drives the epidemic underground," said Fisher. "It is important this does not happen in Afghanistan."
Hoping to end discrimination against Vietnamese AIDS patients, more than 2,000 people took to the streets of Hanoi Sunday.
International health experts have long criticised Hanoi for focusing on HIV/AIDS as an affliction affecting "social evils," rather than raising awareness among the wider population.
In a state-sanctioned event led by Vice President Truong My Hoa, marchers circled Hanoi's Hoam Kiem lake carrying banners saying "Be friends with HIV carriers" and "Don't shun AIDS victims."
Government figures show 56,495 people were HIV positive by the end October but experts say the true number of those infected is at least 200,000, under-reported due to limited testing facilities and a reluctance to admit the full extent of Vietnam's epidemic.
More than 2,000 people including health workers, students, sex workers and people who have HIV or AIDS joined a rally through the streets of Nepal's capital Kathmandu on Sunday.
There are an estimated 58,000 people living with HIV and AIDS in Nepal, according to figures from UNAIDS -- the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS -- and so far 151 have died of the disease.
However Bangladesh says only 20 people have died from AIDS with another 248 HIV-positive.
"Although Bangladesh had a low prevalence rate of the disease due to people's religious beliefs, moral practices and social values, there is no room for complacency," Health Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain told a ceremony Sunday.
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