MANILA, Oct 20 (AFP) - Asia-Pacific risks an AIDS crisis similar in scale to Africa's unless governments across the region step up efforts to combat the spread of the disease, the United Nations warned on Wednesday.
Both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) "need to get the action much accelerated," said Kathleen Cravero, deputy executive director of the UN agency battling the spread of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
She told a forum in the Philippine capital that the ASEAN regoin "had made good progress in the last couple of years but like most of Asia, it is moving too late and too slow."
"The time is now for regional institutions to step up and accelerate their action at a regional level and with individual countries," Cravero said.
"We believe the economic, political and regional institutions in Asia have a great responsibility now because Asia has a window of opportunity to make sure an AIDS epidemic never takes hold ... as it did in Africa," Cravero said.
She called on these institutions to provide resources to individual countries to deal with AIDS and for the national leaders to take a role in combating the spread of the virus.
"Those (APEC) leaders should stand up, these leaders should be promoting strong advocacy, knowledge and awareness," at their annual summits, she added.
Cravero praised the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for allocating funds to help in controlling AIDS, an incurable disease caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that kills by weakening the body's immune system.
ASEAN includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
APEC includes most of these countries as well as Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Taiwan and the United States.
A study by the Manila-based ADB and UNAIDS, said that there were over seven million people infected with the virus in the Asia-Pacific region with half a million dying of the disease each year.
A total of 10 million people in the Asia-Pacific region will be newly-infected by the disease between 2004 and 2010 and the annual death toll will rise by over 750,000 by 2010, the study added,
Cravero also warned the Philippines not to be complacent despite the low AIDS prevalence in this country, saying there were many factors here that could lead to its rapid spread.
There was low condom use, a widely dispersed sex industry, high population mobility, high rates of sexually-transmitted infections, many young people engaged in risky behaviour, drug users shared injecting equipment, and the general public lacked knowledge of AIDS, she said.
There have been only 2,139 cases of AIDS infection recorded in the Philippines but experts believe there are about 10,000 Filipinos who are actually infected with the virus.
The anti-AIDS campaign in the Philippines has been hampered by the dominant Roman Catholic church which has opposed government programs to distribute condoms.
Jean-Marc Olive, chair of a UN group on AIDS, warned that "AIDS all over Asia is rising at a very alarming rate and the Philippines cannot be protected" by its belief it is different from other countries.
He said it was "difficult to promote condom use in an open way" in the Philippines where President Gloria Arroyo has been reluctant to anger the church which disallows the use of contraceptives like condoms.
But he said political commitment could overcome such cultural barriers, citing the example of Mexico, a Catholic country where the government carried out an active anti-AIDS campaign.
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