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India tops world HIV chart

India has the largest number of HIV-infected people in the world, a United Nations report says.

Though the deadly virus started spreading in Asia much after it did in Africa, the UN report says India has three million to five million infected people which places it on top of the world AIDS chart.

More than 30 million people worldwide are living with the virus, and some 16,000 new victims are infected every day.

The report showed that previous studies underestimated the contagion's reach by a third. One in every 100 sexually active adults worldwide is infected with HIV, and only one in 10 knows they are infected.

"If current transmission rates hold steady, by 2000 the number of people living with HIV/AIDS will soar to 40 million,'' the report warns, "The full impact of the epidemic in terms of mortality is only just beginning.''

Earlier figures on HIV infection were much lower because infections were occurring at a much more alarming rate than previously thought, and calculations in sub-Saharan Africa were grossly underestimated, it said.

Some 5.8 million people have been infected in 1997, and an estimated 5.3 million in 1996. Some 2.3 million people died of AIDS in 1997 -- a 50 per cent increase over 1996.

"Nearly half of these were women, and 460,000 were children under 15,'' the report said.

The report paints a devastating picture of sub-Saharan Africa, where 7.4 per cent of people aged between 15 and 49 are thought to be infected.

The HIV-infected in Botswana has doubled over the last five years, and is now increasing at a rate of 25 per cent to 30 per cent. Life expectancy has fallen to the 1960s level.

The report said 25 per cent more infants are dying in Zambia and Zimbabwe because of AIDS. The disease is expected to push Zimbabwe's infant mortality rate up to 138 per cent by 2010.

UNI

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