Observances Around the Globe Warn That Epidemic Still Rages

Health workers around the planet marked World AIDS Day on Tuesday with the now-traditional calls for safe sex and renewed warnings that the AIDS time bomb is still ticking, particularly in Asia.

In seminars, gala shows and torch-lit processions, activists, AIDS victims and potential victims joined to show solidarity against the disease.

Events ranged from a pre-Christmas party for AIDS orphans in Johannesburg, South Africa, to a charity day in a Moscow comedy theater. In Paris, there was the inauguration of the first condom machine to be installed in a high school.

But there were complaints that global anti-AIDS funding is far too low and signs that in some Third World countries AIDS is still seen as a decadent Western disease blamed on sex workers, homosexuals and drug addicts.

“The law must be enforced against prostitution, abnormal sexual behavior and drug addiction and other ugly social phenomena,” said China’s Workers Daily in its AIDS Day report.

At the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization, which leads the worldwide fight against AIDS, chief Hiroshi Nakajima opened a low-key community fair.

Nakajima flew to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly and underline the global nature of the AIDS pandemic and its long-term explosive potential.

According to World Health Organization estimates, about 12 million people worldwide carry the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes the disease, most of them infected by heterosexual intercourse. That figure is expected to rise to at least 40 million by 2000.

In Africa, the worst-hit continent, an estimated 10 million children will have lost at least one parent to AIDS by the end of the century, the U.N. health body projects.