Asia-Pacific AIDS Crisis Growing, U.N. Says
The Asia-Pacific region faces a “silent tsunami” as HIV/AIDS rates surge in a region home to more than half the world’s population, a U.N. official said.
In 2004, the region posted the world’s second-highest infection rates after sub-Saharan Africa, although the overall percentage of the population infected remains relatively low compared with some African countries, said J.V.R. Prasada Rao, regional director of the UNAIDS support team for Asia and the Pacific.
“The virus doesn’t kill hundreds of thousands at a thunderous stroke,” he said at a conference in Kobe. “Rather, it is a silent tsunami.”
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