US warns of AIDS danger

US health authorities and the Central Intelligence Agency has warned that India, "Washington's closest ally in a dangerous part of the world", was sitting on a fast-ticking AIDS (Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome) bomb which could wreak havoc and can weaken the economy and military strength unless defused quickly.

Assessing AIDS in terms of the impact it could have on the world power equation, officials said India had to take strong measures before it is too late, a CBS current affairs programme said.

By some estimates, the most AIDS-infected region in the world is no longer Africa. "It is in Asia, and the country is India," the CIA was quoted as saying.

"If the epidemic is not contained soon, it could come back to haunt us -- weakening India's army and damaging India's economy, which is closely tied to ours. And it could even lead to a new epidemic of the virus back in the US," according to a CIA report quoted by CBS 60 minutes programme.

"The national security dimension of the virus is plain. It can diminish military preparedness and further weaken beleaguered states," CIA Director George Tenet said in the report.

This, said CBS, has not happened in India, "but it could, if the epidemic spreads any further. Experts say India is close to the tipping point." After that, the virus will spread too far to be contained. Right now, it is still India's prostitutes who have been hardest-hit, the programme said.

The programme showed Bombay's crowded red light areas where most of the women appeared reluctant discuss the disease. The few that did, however, said that condoms, the only thing between them and near-certain death, were bad for business.

The report quoted Dr Suniti Solomon, a social worker who detected AIDS among prostitutes more than a decade ago, as saying that, like in other parts of the world, the virus has spread well beyond the red light districts.

"I used to see a new patient every week during early 1990s," Solomon said. "Today, we see 10 to 11 new patients every day." That, said CBS, is why Solomon had set one of the first AIDS hospitals in India in Chennai.

She said roughly 20 per cent of her patients are truck drivers, who often frequent prostitutes. But 90 per cent of Solomon's female patients are not prostitutes but married women who have contacted HIV from their husbands.

Bill Gates, the world's richest man and founder of Microsoft, recently donated USD 200 million specifically to combat AIDS in India. Despite issuing the warning, the report said, the US government has offered less than 1 per cent of the entire money spent on AIDS to address the epidemic in India.