Pacific region die of AIDS, and 3,500 are newly infected, each day, according to the World Health Organization. The U.N. estimates that 8.2 million people live with HIV in Asia, some 5.1 million of them in India. 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 programmes are 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. Funding to fight AIDS in the region is seen rising to roughly $1.6 billion by 2007, but this is still far from sufficient, UNAIDS said in a report on Friday, estimating that $5 billion will be needed. --more 1402 Local Time 1102 GMT
