AIDS claimed some 540,000 lives in Asia-Pacific alone in 2004.
It attributed the increase in the death toll to early marriages among young
girls. Figures released state that around 30 per cent girls are married before
they attain the age of 15, while another 62 per cent before they turn eighteen.
Often with much older male spouses these newly wed face gender inequality.
Drug injection is the strongest driver of HIV infection in many parts of Asia.
There are signs that injecting drug use is playing a bigger role in India's
epidemic than previously thought. About 5.1 million people in India are living
with HIV and more cases underway in several states.
In the southern city of Chennai, 26 percent of drug injectors were reported
infected with HIV in 2000. This figure increased considerably by 2003, with 64
per cent infected. In Tamil Nadu, HIV has been contracted by 50 per cent of the
sex workers.
The report also says prevention programmes are not reaching the needy. The most
vulnerable in the population are sex workers, men who have sex with men,
injecting drug users, migrants and young people do not have adequate access to
HIV care and prevention services.
In South and South-East Asia, in 2003 targeted HIV prevention programmes
reached only 19 per cent sex workers, 5 per cent injecting drug users, and no
more than 2 per cent of men who have sex with men. Only 14 per cent of the 1.1
million people who need antiretroviral treatment receive it, according to the
latest estimates published by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization.
Although the AIDS epidemic is mainly concentrated among the most vulnerable in
the population, HIV could spread into the general population unless determined
action is taken.
A scaled-up response to AIDS prevention and care programmes could stop the
epidemic in its tracks and minimize its human and economic costs, the report
stressed.
