GENEVA, Aug 31 (AFP) - Experts attending an international health conference in Switzerland urged women and young people on Tuesday to play a greater part in helping researchers to find a vaccine against AIDS and the HIV virus which causes it.

"Studies show that women, when exposed to HIV, are at least twice as likely to become infected with HIV as their male counterparts," the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations AIDS programme UNAIDS said in a joint statement.

Saladin Osmanov, the acting coordinator for the two organisations' HIV Vaccine Initiative, told the conference that women and adolescents "would be major beneficiaries of a future HIV vaccine".

But, he said, "in spite of the epidemiological reality, women and adolescents, especially girls, have often had minimal involvement in clinical trials of HIV vaccines, as compared to men."

The WHO/UNAIDS statement noted that "in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, girls and young women are up to six times more likely to be infected than their male peers."

It added that "girls and young women aged 15-24 make up 62 percent of the young people in developing countries living with HIV or AIDS."

About 800 experts are attending the conference, which opened in the Swiss city of Lausanne on Monday.

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