Most HIV spread in Asia is caused by heterosexual sex and by injected drugs, although every country has different circumstances. There are an estimated five to seven million HIV infected people in Asia. In India, the authorities have been criticised for underestimating the problem - it is thought there are four million infected, which is more than any other single country in the world. Much of the conference will focus on overcoming religious and cultural taboos that make safe sex education difficult in many countries. Massive prevention campaigns, which have proved relatively successful in Western European and North American countries, may prove extremely difficult to replicate in Asia.
Denial is a very major problem.
In the remote country of Nepal, the virus has been spread by the trafficking of girls to Indian brothels, the large number of migrant workers, a rise in urban prostitution in Nepal itself, and primitive blood banks, which lack any of the usual screening technology to root out blood from infected donors. Sexually transmitted diseases of all sorts, which were virtually eradicated from China in the 1960s, are now rising rapidly. African horror AIDS has now become the leading cause of premature death in some African countries. It has killed millions and left millions of children orphaned, a legacy which will haunt governments economically and socially for decades. The development of AIDS following HIV infection is swift in people whose general health is not good, or whose nutrition is poor.