The Associated Press - Sunday, December 1, 1996 8:10 am EST.

Gas stations in Thailand started passing out 3 million condoms free to customers, along with a warning: "Be careful of AIDS when feeling naughty."

A group in the Philippines pleaded on behalf of AIDS patients and carriers of HIV, the virus that causes the disease: "We are not a menace and this is not a curse from God. ... Give us a break. Allow us to freely go back to the mainstream of society or community, where we used to belong."

The occasion Sunday was World AIDS Day, and Philippine Health Secretary Carmencita Reodica summed up the message: "AIDS awareness should be translated to a change in behavior."

Already, an estimated 22 million people around the world carry HIV as the day called attention to efforts to stop its spread.

Photo exhibitions also carried the message in India, where volunteer organizations say India has Asia's worst AIDS epidemic, with an estimated 1 million or more HIV infection cases. Charity organizations sponsored marches in Bombay, the nation's financial capital.

In Beijing's Zhongshan Park, near the ancient imperial palace, graphic photos of the disease were accompanied by a poster headed: "The risks of careless sex and lifestyle hygiene."

Chinese health officials have warned that more than 1 million Chinese, or 10 times the estimated present number, could be infected with HIV by 2000 if China does not take proper steps to control the disease.

The official number for known infections, reported by the Health Ministry Sunday, was 5,157 as of the end of October, up 850 from a figure given Sept. 1.

In Thailand, which has an active sex industry, the health ministry and the state-owned Petroleum Authority of Thailand sponsored the program to pass out condoms at 420 gas stations.

An estimated 800,000 of Thailand's 60 million people have the HIV virus, and some 50,000 more have died of AIDS.

In Manila, about 250 Philippine government officials, anti-AIDS activists and at least four HIV patients joined in the two-kilometer (1.25-mile) "First National AIDS Walk."

Health Secretary Reodica said in a speech to the group that many Filipinos do not use condoms because they are too shy to buy them in stores.

The Philippines is predominantly Roman Catholic, and church leaders frown on the use of artificial contraceptives, such as condoms.

In Islamabad, U.N. health officials lauded efforts by Pakistan to combat the spread of AIDS, but expressed fears that conservative social values in the predominantly Muslim nation could prevent awareness campaigns.

Of 1.5 million Pakistanis who participated in an anonymous test for the AIDS virus, 1,033 tested positive.

It is estimated that as many as 80,000 people are HIV positive in Pakistan, a small percentage of the estimated 5.2 million people living with AIDS in South and Southeast Asia, said Dr. Nesim Tumkaya, chairman of the U.N. AIDS program.

But it is spreading in Pakistan, which worries health officials.

Papua New Guinea's National Council of Women called for fighting AIDS by abolishing the practice of husbands having more than one wife, and restricting travel between provinces.

"The practice of polygamous marriage allowed under customary law in this country needs to be done away with or reviewed as it is no longer safe," council president Susan Satae said in a World AIDS Day speech.

"We don't want to be another African country full of orphans and their grandparents as parents have died of AIDS," she added.

Using the international symbol of AIDS awareness, more than 600 young people in Hong Kong held red balloons to form a giant red ribbon after a concert by movie and music celebrities in one of the colony's largest parks. Volunteers distributed free condoms Saturday in residential and commercial districts.

Volunteers, friends and family members of AIDS victims in Taiwan displayed memorial quilt patches in a Taipei park for the second consecutive year. In another memorial Saturday night, the Association for Preventive Medicine sponsored a release of floating paper lanterns on the Tanshui River.

Bahrain dedicated an hour of the school day to educate students about AIDS.

Near one of Tokyo's major railway stations, more than 400 people gathered for the lighting of a six-meter (20-foot)-high tree bearing more than 12,000 red ribbons, sent by schools and supporters throughout Japan.

Volunteers collected donations to fight AIDS, and Health Minister Junichiro Koizumi told the gathering: "AIDS is also spreading in Japan ... but a light of hope is being seen with work for new methods of medical treatment. Let's establish a society with no discrimination and prejudice."

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