AIDS' Threat to Asia Grows NEW DELHI----Just a few years ago, Mala was a typical middle-class Indian housewife. She cooked, cleaned and looked after her two small children. Last year, her life took a tragic turn. Her husband died of AIDS; she was found out HIV-positive and her mother-in-law took her children away from her, saying they would get the disease. "When friends dropped for a visit, she would introduce me, saying, 'She is my son's widow. She has AIDS,'" said Mala. AIDS is now described as "explosive " around the world. A study of a hospital in the port city of Durban in South Africa, where the world's biggest and Africa's second AIDS conference opened last Sunday, found that almost half the beds in medical wards   were occupied by AIDS patients. South Africa has one of the world's fastest growing HIV infections, with 1,700 people infected daily, adding to the 4.3 million, or 10 percent of its population, living with HIV. Until now, Asia has been more successful in holding the AIDS virus than Africa, where the disease has killed about 12 million people. AIDS is now threatening to surround many of Asia's poverty-stricken countries. Countries in Asia, such as Cambodia, and Thailand, have HIV infection speeds over 1 percent. But the low speeds hide huge numbers of infected people, because of the population base. In India, for example, 3.7 million are infected, more than in any other country except South Africa. In China, an estimated 860,000 people (the actual number may be a little larger), mainly drug users, live with HIV/AIDS. Gordon Alexander, a senior advisor for UN AIDS in India, estimates that the number hit by AIDS in Asia will climb about eight million over the next five years from about six million. In many Asian countries, the battle against HIV is a social and cultural one against public discussion of sexual health put a nationwide media campaign into action to limit the speed of HIV through unsafe sex. Brenton Wong, an official for Singapore's Action for AIDS, _ . "Shame and deny is still very, very common so people are afraid to get tested and many times won't even tell their families if they test positive," said Wong. It is judged that there are   _   people hit by AIDS in Asia or so.
4.3 million 6 million 8 million 3.7 million