World Marks AIDS Day as Disease’s Toll Keeps Rising

In Rome, taxi drivers distributed AIDS leaflets. Across Thailand, gas stations offered free condoms. In South Africa, Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu went on TV to urge people to practice safe sex.

World AIDS Day was marked with renewed vigor around the world Sunday after a U.N. agency reported an accelerating death toll, with nearly a quarter of the 6.4 million AIDS deaths to date occurring in the past year.

In 1996, 3.1 million people were infected with human immunodeficiency--the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome--bringing the total number of people with HIV or AIDS to 22.6 million, UNAIDS said.

The United Nations launched the Geneva-based UNAIDS as a special agency to help combat the disease. Scientists have worked frantically, but there is still no cure for the devastating illness.

Events marking World AIDS Day were particularly graphic in Asia, the site of a virtual explosion in AIDS cases.

Activists posted photos of an emaciated person with AIDS in a central Beijing park, along with posters that read, “The risks of careless sex and lifestyle hygiene.”

Health officials have warned that more than 1 million Chinese--10 times the estimated number currently infected--could contract HIV by 2000 if preventive measures are not taken.

Photo exhibitions also carried the message in India, which volunteer organizations say has Asia’s worst AIDS epidemic, with an estimated 1 million or more HIV cases. Marches were held in Bombay.

In Thailand, which has an active sex industry, 420 gas stations distributed 3 million condoms to customers with the warning, “Be careful of AIDS when feeling naughty.” About 800,000 of Thailand’s 60 million people have HIV, and 50,000 more have died of AIDS.

More than 400 people gathered in Tokyo for the lighting of a 20-foot tree bearing 12,000 red ribbons, symbol of the fight against AIDS.

European activists also warned against complacency.

In Paris, several hundred AIDS activists marched with signs reading, “AIDS: The Epidemic Isn’t Over” and “Zero Equals the Number of AIDS Survivors.”

In Rome, two taxi companies distributed AIDS information leaflets to passengers, and some players in Italy’s top soccer league wore red bows on their uniforms.

In South Africa, retired Archbishop Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his fight against apartheid, appeared in a TV advertisement to urge, “Please use a condom!”