UNITED NATIONS (IPS)—AIDS, which health experts say has already ravaged Sub-Saharan Africa, is rapidly spreading across several new regions of the world, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recently warned.

Mr. Annan told the audience at a memorial lecture for Diana, Princess of Wales, in London June 25 that the spread of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is "expanding in new directions." South Asia, Eastern Europe and East Asia and the Pacific are particularly at risk, he said.

The disease is now widely present in Eastern Europe, where five years ago the AIDS virus was almost unknown, he said. Meanwhile, in East Asia and the Pacific, new infections rose by 70 percent between 1996 and 1998, according to UN estimates.

In India, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the primary AIDS carrier, is "now firmly embedded in the general population," Annan said. The secretary-general argued that AIDS is spreading into rural areas of India that were earlier thought to have been spared. "India as a whole now has more people living with HIV than any other single country in the world,’’ Mr. Annan told the meeting in London.

He warned that unless the international community acts fast, these new regions could soon face a crisis "comparable to what we see in many parts of Africa, where whole nations now live under the shadow of AIDS."

"Every minute that passes, as you and I go about the routine business of our lives, four or more young Africans are infected,’’ Mr. Annan said. "And every day, Africa buries five and a half thousand of its sons and daughters who have died of AIDS."

The UN secretary general said the challenge has to be met with increased resources. But the $150 million a year currently being spent on AIDS in Africa alone "comes nowhere near what is needed," he contended.

To carry out a minimally effective package of interventions, the affected countries would require at least a six-fold increase in resources, according to UNAIDS, a Geneva-based inter-agency body which leads the UN’s fight against the killer disease.