(I reported this article for Nature from the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok. It appeared on Nature’s news site on July 12, 2004.)

Leaders urged to take immediate action.

Around 7.4 million people in Asia are already living with HIV.

Bangkok – A massive AIDS epidemic is spreading rapidly in Asia, and is sneaking below the radar of governments in the region, experts warned on 11 July.

Speaking at the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, scientists urged Asian governments to scale up prevention and treatment efforts by providing sterile needles, condoms and antiretroviral drugs.

“This conference must be a wake-up call to Asian leaders,” says Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. “They’re starting to respond, but sometimes too timidly.”

An estimated 7.4 million people in Asia are already living with HIV. Unlike in Africa, where the disease has spread into the general population, the Asian epidemic is driven largely by intravenous drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men, according to a
new report released by the network known as Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic (MAP).

“That pattern has held in virtually every country in Asia,” says Tim Brown, an epidemiologist at the East-West Center research organization in Bangkok, and a member of the MAP network.