One in four new infections occurs in Asia. The virus has spread to all provinces in China, while India has the world's second-highest number of AIDS/HIV patients after South Africa.

The epidemic is still mainly concentrated among vulnerable groups such as homosexuals, injecting drug users and sex workers, but could spread into the general population unless determined efforts are made, says a report released in advance of an AIDS conference opening in the western Japanese city of Kobe later on Friday.

"The risk of AIDS spreading further in Asia and the Pacific is now higher than ever," said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the U.N. agency devoted to fighting the epidemic.

Low condom use, limited access to HIV testing, gender inequality, widespread injecting drug use, and sex work are seen as a "dangerous cocktail" that could lead to a rapid expansion of the deadly disease.

"If HIV prevention programs are urgently scaled up, six million HIV infections could be prevented in the next five years in the region," he said in a statement.

"If Asian countries do not rise up to the challenge, then 12 million people will become newly infected."

Prevention and access to cheap medicine top the agenda at the 7th Asia-Pacific AIDS Conference in Kobe from July 1 to 5. The main concern is to ensure the disease does not proliferate in Asia as it did in Africa.

The United Nations estimates that 8.2 million people live with HIV in Asia, some 5.1 million of them in India alone. The Chinese government says there are 840,000 patients in China.

Worldwide, about 39 million people have HIV/AIDS, including 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa.

But targeted prevention programs are believed to be reaching only 19 percent of sex workers and 5 percent of injecting drug users in Asia. The figure for homosexual men is no higher than 2 percent.

"Universal access to prevention and treatment must not be a dream, but a reality," Piot said.

VAST DIFFERENCES

Funding to fight AIDS in the region is seen rising to roughly $1.6 billion by 2007, but this is still far from sufficient, the UNAIDS report said, estimating that $5 billion will be needed.

Vast cultural and political differences within Asia complicate the battle. Blood-selling scandals were initially covered up in China, where fear of being stigmatized has prevented many in China from getting tested -- a situation echoed across other parts of Asia.

There are other common threads, such as a need to promote the use of condoms, educating sex workers and injecting drug users to the dangers of the disease, and empowering women, who make up more than half of the new HIV infections worldwide.

In Asia, over 30 percent of girls are married before the age of 15, and 62 percent before 18, often to much older husbands.

The report called on world leaders to make tackling AIDS in Asia and the Pacific a global priority as with AIDS in Africa.

East Asia faces the fastest-growing HIV epidemic in the world, it said, due to the rapid spread of HIV in China, Indonesia and Vietnam. Papua New Guinea is also seeing a rapid expansion of the disease.

Even affluent and well-educated Japan is at risk due to a lack of awareness, official apathy and the stigma that prevents many from being tested.

But the number of Japanese cases are still relatively low at 10,070 over the last decade, giving Japan, along with nations such as the Philippines, the chance to still ward off a serious outbreak.

"We must not lose sight of the fact that 99 percent of people and the Pacific remain uninfected," Piot added. "Effective prevention programs must be scaled up now more than ever."