BANGKOK, Nov 23 (AFP) - The booming sex trade has contributed to an HIV/AIDS crisis in Asia with more than eight million people now living with the virus and numbers rising sharply among women, the United Nations reported on Tuesday.
The number of infected Asians jumped by one million over the past two years, bringing the regional total to 8.2 million, according to an annual AIDS epidemic report by UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation.
Some 5.1 million of those live in India, the highest number in the world except for South Africa. The virus is spreading fastest in Asia and Eastern Europe.
China had some 220,000 new infections since 2002 to take the total to 840,000. Infections among East Asian women jumped by 56 percent over the same period, representing the largest global increase for women.
Asia, the world's most populous region with 3.9 billion people, has long been identified by the UN as prone to an epidemic which threatens to be as bad as in sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the people with HIV.
The report revealed alarming increases in infection rates among intravenous drug users but said the sex industry was still the main driver of transmissions.
"Most new infections in Asia occur when men buy sex, and large numbers of men do so," said the report. It said up to 10 percent of Asian men pay for sex.
Many sex workers were still prepared to work without condoms because some clients were willing to pay much higher prices for unprotected sex, it said.
Fewer than one in five sex workers in Jakarta massage parlours reported using condoms.
Men who slept with sex workers were often responsible for passing the virus to their wives and girlfriends, who are now being infected in record numbers, said UNICEF regional AIDS advisor Wing-Sie Cheng.
"For women, remaining faithful is no longer a good enough precaution to ensure they are safe from the risk of HIV infection," she told AFP.
The report said illegal drug injectors were the second largest factor in the spread of HIV in many Asian countries, particularly in Indonesia, Nepal, Vietnam and parts of China.
"One in two injecting drug users in Jakarta now test positive for HIV, while in cities such as Pontianak (Indonesia) more than 70 percent of drug injectors are being found to be HIV-positive," the report said.
It recommended more nations adopt opiate substitution and needle-exchange programs to cut down on the use of dirty needles.
HIV epidemics were already deeply entrenched in countries such as India, Myanmar and China where current anti-AIDS campaigns were making limited headway, said the report.
It cited a 2003 survey which revealed that one in five Chinese could not name a single way to protect themselves against the virus.
Despite the grim news the report said many Asian nations could still avert potential epidemics and urged them not to waste a golden opportunity.
It said Bangladesh, East Timor, Laos, Pakistan and the Philippines all had very low HIV prevalence rates and could stave off potential epidemics if they adopted the sort of prevention programs adopted by countries such as Thailand.
Thailand was widely praised in the 1990s for its unflinching response to the AIDS epidemic, including promoting the use of condoms which helped reduce new annual infections from a high of 143,000 in 1991 to 19,000 last year.
The kingdom has also been a regional leader in the distribution of cheap, generic anti-AIDS drugs which have allowed thousands of people in the region living with HIV to continue relatively normal lives.
The UN agencies estimated that 3.1 million people will have died worldwide from AIDS in 2004 -- more than 540,000 of them in Asia -- the most in any one year and 200,000 more than in 2003.
They said nearly 40 million now have HIV, the highest toll in the 23-year history of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
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