New Delhi: With an effort to strengthen the response to HIV/AIDS, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) today (Apr 18, 2004) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with UNAIDS which will help the region scale up HIV care, treatment and prevention services.

The partnership agreement, signed in Kathmandu, focuses specifically on tackling the challenges of stigma and discrimination as well as scaling up HIV care, treatment and prevention services, UNAIDS said in a release.

These services are significantly lacking in SAARC member countries India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, UNAIDS said.

"Home to close to 50 pc cent of the world's poor living on less than a dollar a day, South Asia is faced with a potentially explosive AIDS epidemic that could erupt unless existing HIV prevention and care efforts are scaled up immediately," Dr Peter Ptiot, executive director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said.

SAARC's commitment to AIDS emerged from the 12th SAARC summit held in Islamabad in January this year during which 2004 was declared as the "SAARC Awareness Year for TB and HIV/AIDS", the release said.

While in India, the epidemic is gradually spreading into rural areas and the wider Indian population, Bangladesh and Nepal face the problem as risky behaviour among young people is on rise, it said.

"It (South Asia) must invest its human and financial resources in effectively turning the tide of AIDS. The cost of inaction will be much more severe a few years from now," Ptiot said.