Millions of people have marked World AIDS Day with parades and prayers as a plan was unveiled to treat three million people living with AIDS within two years.

"We appear to be losing the fight against AIDS at the moment," said U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson, who was on Monday visiting Zambia, one of the worst-hit nations.

"We need to redouble our efforts. This war has more casualties than any other war as we are losing three million people every year," Reuters quoted Thompson as saying.

World AIDS Day came amid news of a new US$5.5 billion emergency strategy to supply badly needed drugs to fight a disease now infecting 40 million people globally. Organizers have given themselves a deadline of 2005 to combat the virus.

The "3 by 5" plan, launched by World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday, seeks to give antiretroviral treatment to HIV sufferers in developing countries by the end of 2005.

The campaign coincides with scores of other events for World AIDS Day around the globe, including candlelight vigils, concerts, educational seminars and torchlight parades. 

In Singapore, scantily-clad women handed out free condoms while Buddhist monks prayed in Thailand and China broadcast the first officially backed TV condom advertisement.

But as activists marked the 15th such event, health experts warned the worst was yet to come, with the epidemic all but unchecked in some parts of the world.

The United Nations reported last week that 2003 saw more deaths and new infections form the virus than ever before, sparking a warning from Secretary-General Kofi Annan the world is losing its war on AIDS. 

More than three million people were killed and another five million were infected in 2003 alone. Statistics show that every day another 8,000 people die from the illness.

According to the U.N. agency, UNAIDS, as many as 40 million people are infected with HIV around the world. Accurate numbers are hard to come by because of shortfalls in reporting and poor health care.

New waves

Africa is bearing the brunt of the pandemic, with an estimated 26.6 million people in sub-Saharan Africa suffering from HIV/AIDS -- more than the rest of the world put together.

About 3.2 million new infections were recorded in 2003, and 2.3 million deaths.

One of the worst hit southern African nations is Zambia, where one in five adults has HIV, the virus which causes AIDS.

UNAIDS has warned a new wave of the disease is also threatening China, Indonesia and Russia, fueled by drug use and unsafe sex.

An estimated one million people were infected in Asia-Pacific this year, taking the total to more than seven million. Cambodia is the worst-affected country in Asia.

The Chinese government says 840,000 of Chinese citizens has full-blown AIDS.

In an example of how a lack of awareness can expound the problem, many poor farmers in central China's Henan province contracted AIDS in the late 1980s and 1990s after receiving bad blood from unhygienic dealers. 

In a bid to raise awareness of a pandemic that humanitarian groups have called the worst crisis of all time, nations across the world have been holding concerts and other events.

In Cape Town, Beyonce Knowles and U2's Bono headlined a star-studded concert on Saturday, kicking off this year's campaign.

In a stadium packed with 40,000 people, former South African President Nelson Mandela called on governments around the world to act immediately in the fight against AIDS. 

A day later Pope John Paul II offered a special prayer for AIDS victims and their caregivers.

"While I pray for those who are hit by this scourge, I encourage those in the Church who carry out an invaluable service of acceptance, care and spiritual accompaniment to our brothers and sisters," John Paul said in St. Peter's Square.

John Paul's comments, delivered in his traditional Sunday greeting, came amid renewed criticism of Vatican opposition to using condoms to curb the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The Vatican maintains that chastity is the best method of prevention.

As part of a bid to crack down on the virus, global health groups say the "3 by 5" plan will try to get much-needed drugs into the hands of the neediest patients.

The WHO estimates six million people in poor countries need antiretroviral treatment, and their goal is to halve that number by 2005.

But experts say achieving that target will depend on a vast increase in the manufacture and distribution of therapy drugs.

In late October, former President Bill Clinton brokered a deal with pharmaceutical companies to slash the cost of HIV/AIDS drugs by at least 45 percent in about a dozen Caribbean nations and four African countries.

(courtesy to Cnn.com)

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