Dimensions of Asian AIDS Epidemic Cited : Health: The number with HIV infection is revised upward, to more than 1 million.

The staggering dimensions of the AIDS epidemic in Asia and Africa became clear Monday as a top World Health Organization official presented the latest statistics on the global spread of the deadly virus.

New data on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections in Thailand and India are so compelling that the U.N. health organization just last week revised its estimate of the current number of HIV-infected Asians yet again, from 500,000 to greater than 1 million.

By the mid-1990s, 3 million HIV infections are projected for Asia. Just a few years ago, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome virus was virtually unheard of in Asia.

“Unfortunately, most of our estimates will not be revised downward,” said Dr. James Chin, the head of surveillance and forecasting for the U.N. agency’s global program on AIDS. “When we have more data, (the forecasts) will have to be revised probably upward.”

In Africa, the number of HIV individuals is projected to increase from 6 million to 10 million over the next several years, leading to precipitous increases in mortality and sharp decreases in life expectancy.

In the United States and all other Western nations combined, it is estimated that there are fewer than 2 million people infected with the AIDS virus.

Presentations at the 7th International Conference on AIDS emphasized how the disease has shifted from an epidemic that primarily involved homosexual men and injecting drug users in industrialized nations to epidemics primarily affecting heterosexual men and women in developing nations.

By the year 2000, about 90% of all HIV infections will be in heterosexuals in developing countries, Chin said.

A key reason is that AIDS education and prevention programs in industrialized nations have been far more extensive.

As a result, the annual number of new AIDS cases is likely to peak in the United States and Western Europe within the next several years, Chin said. This peak, however, will represent more than the current level of cases each year.

Other researchers reported that intensive educational programs, such as those for intravenous drug users in Bangkok, Thailand, and for prostitutes in Kinshasha, Zaire, have significantly lowered the number of new HIV infections.

But such programs are few and far between.

AIDS may have a greater potential for spreading in Asia than in Africa. The adult population in South and Southeast Asia is nearly 500 million, compared with 225 million in sub-Saharan Africa.

In India, the trends are similar, according to Dr. Jonathan Mann of the Harvard School of Public Health, who is a former director of the U.N. agency’s AIDS program.

The evidence from Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and New Delhi “all suggest a rather rapidly growing heterosexual epidemic,” Mann said. Estimates of the number of HIV-infected Indians range from 500,000 upwards.

HIV infections are also increasing in Latin America, where about 1 million people are estimated to carry the virus, but the rate of increase is not as dramatic as in either Asia or Africa, Chin said.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the area of the world hardest hit by AIDS; soon one of every 40 adults will be HIV-infected.