Across the world, activists and governments marked World AIDS Day on Wednesday with events drawing attention to the disease and promoting prevention.

The world’s two most populous nations promised to eradicate ignorance about AIDS, once dismissed by many as a Western evil confined to drug users, homosexuals and prostitutes.

China, criticized for its slow initial response to HIV/AIDS, put on a public display of commitment to fighting a disease the United Nations fears could infect 10 million Chinese by 2010.

In India, where over five million people have already been infected with HIV, the government said it would make greater efforts to promote awareness, especially in rural areas and among the young.

“The world can no longer afford to ignore the enormity of the HIV epidemic,” Antonio Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told an assembly in Beijing.

“The time has come to strike back at a killer that is transmitted by drug use and sex, as well as by ignorance and denial,” he said before an audience waving large styrofoam red ribbons, that have come to symbolise the fight against AIDS.

China’s battle against the spread of HIV had been hampered by politics, but on Tuesday President Hu Jintao shook hands with an AIDS patient and Premier Wen Jiabao called for “unremitting efforts” against the epidemic.

Khalid Malik, resident coordinator for the U.N. in China, praised the new-found zeal of China’s leaders, but said the challenge now was to ensure their policies reached the villages.

In India, four special trains will criss-cross the country, spreading awareness mostly in rural areas, said S. Y. Quraishi, head of India’s National Aids Control Organization.

WOMEN AND GIRLS

Activists said attitudes toward women and gays were hampering efforts to fight the disease.

In Cambodia, straying husbands are accused of spreading AIDS among women and girls, now the most vulnerable group and the theme of this year’s AIDS Day. “I would like to send a message to those unfaithful husbands not to bring AIDS home to kill your innocent wife,” said national AIDS chief Dr Tia Phalla.

In the tiny Pacific state of Papua New Guinea, where rape and multiple wives are common, the number of cases is expected to soar to between 1 and 1.5 million by 2015-2020 from 67,000, potentially wiping out a generation and destroying the economy.

But in Thailand, where a mass public awareness campaign in the 1990s has been credited with sharply reducing the number of new HIV infections, youngsters paraded through shopping centers dressed as condoms to distribute condoms to other teenagers.

In neighboring Vietnam, with an estimated 85,000 HIV cases, Health Minister Tran Thi Trung Chien said a stigma remained and in conservative Singapore activists said antiquated laws banning gay sex were hurting the fight against AIDS.

In countries like Pakistan, where talking about sex is taboo, information about HIV/AIDS is scant and even the government has little idea how many people are infected.

In Sri Lanka, President Chandrika Kumaratunga said there were about 4,800 cases but a lack of counselling and testing meant numerous cases were going unreported.

India’s 5.1 million HIV cases are second only to South Africa, where politicians and activists exhorted people to fight a disease killing an estimated 600 South Africans each day.

The two countries’ cricketers wore red ribbons on their white shirts at a match in Calcutta, and the South African Americas Cup yachting team unveiled a huge new spinnaker adorned with a 33-meter symbol of the fight against AIDS.

Veteran politician Mangosuthu Buthelezi urged the congregation at a Cape Town cathedral to break down the stigma of AIDS - which has claimed two of his children. “AIDS is decimating our people, tearing apart our families, uprooting our communities,” he said.

The World Health Organization estimates 25.4 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, some 60 percent of the global total.

In countries such as Botswana and Swaziland, deaths from the disease are robbing economies of workers, families of breadwinners and cutting average life expectancy by decades.

Thousands in Botswana staged rallies as the country’s president called on his stricken people to “Abstain or Die.”

Botswana President Festus Mogae told the BBC that 37 percent of Botswanans were infected with HIV. “We don’t seem to be getting on top of it,” he said bleakly. “We have to say things like ‘abstain or die’.”