Date:         Tue, 29 Mar 1994 16:21:50 EST
Reply-To: dionisio@INFINET.COM
Subject:      WHO report on AIDS

NO END IN SIGHT TO SPREAD OF AIDS, WHO SAYS

    KUWAIT (Reuter) (3-21-94) - A cure is not imminent for the virus
that causes AIDS, and the pandemic will continue well into the 21st
century, the World Health Organization said Monday.

    ``The end is nowhere in sight. The pandemic is certain to continue
well into the 21st century," said Michael Merson, a top AIDS expert
and executive director of the WHO's Global Program on AIDS.

    Referring to efforts to find a cure or a vaccine, he said: ``There
is no breakthrough and I do not think one is imminent. We will not
have a magic potion against AIDS before the year 2,000."

    AIDS is exploding in Asia, and in Africa, the continent that first
fell victim to the killer disease, ``there is far worse to come as the
millions of infected people fall ill and die," Merson said in a
keynote address at an AIDS conference.

    ``But the most alarming trends of all are in South and Southeast
Asia, where the pandemic is spreading in some places as fast as it was
a decade ago in sub-Saharan Africa," Merson said.

    ``If the HIV epidemic continues to expand at this rate on the
Asian continent, we will soon see more Asians infected with HIV each
year than Africans."

    The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes AIDS (Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome), a breakdown in a person's defenses
against other diseases. There is no known cure or vaccine for AIDS,
which causes 100,000 deaths each year.