CDC: China, India May Face AIDS Catastrophe

China, India, and Cambodia could face an AIDS "catastrophe" as HIV spreads deeper into parts of Asia where public health controls are weak, CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said at a meeting in Singapore Thursday. "It looks like Africa did a decade or so ago," she said. Gerberding was meeting Asian health officials to discuss technical support in detecting emerging infectious disease in the aftermath of deadly outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. China estimates that around 1 million of its people have HIV -- a figure the UN says could soar to 10 million by 2010. India has at least 4 million infected people. In Cambodia, an estimated 158,000 people, or 2.6 percent of adults, are HIV-positive. "If we don't intervene in those environments we will have a catastrophe of a very, very profound increase in the number of cases," Gerberding said.

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