Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - December 1, 2004
National infection rates remain lower in Asia than in other parts of the world - particularly worst-hit Africa - but the large populations of many countries in the region mean vast numbers of people are stricken. The epidemic has claimed about 540,000 lives in Asia so far this year.
In China, President Hu Jintao shook hands with AIDS patients during a highly publicized hospital visit aimed at highlighting Beijing's commitment to fighting the pandemic in the world's most populous country.
China has recently launched efforts to combat the spread of the disease, after years of denying AIDS was a problem.
Health officials, meanwhile, have stressed that women are the most vulnerable.
Some 47% of the 45 million people worldwide infected with HIV are female, and women in East Asia are contracting the disease at a faster rate often because men who visit prostitutes are increasingly passing on the virus to their wives, the United Nations warned last week.
"Gender inequalities make it difficult for Asian women to negotiate safer sex in a relationship," the Bangkok-based Asia Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS quoted an Indian woman with the disease as saying.
Health workers, patients and volunteers in Thailand - among the countries hardest hit by the disease in Southeast Asia - prepared to lead a parade through the streets of the capital, Bangkok.
About 600,000 people have died of AIDS in Thailand, and there are now about 572,000 people living with the disease. Thai health authorities are providing free generic anti-retroviral drugs to about 50,000 people this year.
In the Philippines, where infection rates remain low, gay men - one wearing only shorts adorned with multicolored condoms - strutted before the press Tuesday to promote HIV testing.
A popular nightclub in Tokyo, meanwhile, kicked off an AIDS awareness campaign Wednesday with plans for an annual concert to benefit AIDS activist groups and the distribution of 20,000 pamphlets and condoms around the capital.
In Taiwan, AIDS campaigners said the image of people living with the disease had to change, praising the media for helping to publicize the plight of infected people, but accusing them of reinforcing negative stereotypes.
"AIDS patients are often represented as promiscuous and reckless," AIDS activist Lin Yi-huei said, referring to media coverage of police drug raids on gay parties.
Malaysia's AIDS situation was worsening because of lack of awareness about the dangers of unprotected sex and intravenous drug use, warned Marina Mahathir, president of the nongovernment Malaysian AIDS Council, in an editorial published Wednesday in The Star newspaper.
"We live surrounded by silence about HIV , even though we may hear a lot of news about it," Marina wrote in a column published Wednesday in The Star newspaper.
Members of the group visited public train stations in the capital of Kuala Lumpur to distribute pamphlets on how to avoid contracting HIV . According to government statistics, 58,012 people were HIV-positive at the end of 2003 in the country of 25 million people.
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