The government has issued a new draft policy protecting the three million South Africans with the HIV virus or Aids from losing out in education.

Schools will no longer be allowed to bar people who are HIV positive.

They will also be required to provide the best education possible to students who become too ill to attend classes.

The policy document concludes there is an "insignificant risk" of spreading the disease in schools and universities.

South Africa has the fastest growing Aids epidemic in the world, with 1500 new infections every day.

BBC Africa Correspondent Jane Standley says discrimination against people with Aids is almost as widespread in South Africa as the virus itself.

Sufferers are often shunned by their families and lose their friends and their jobs.

Ban on compulsory Aids tests

The anti-discrimination policy in schools is the government's first, but it is formulating others such as banning mandatory Aids testing in the workplace and making Aids awareness lessons an educational requirement.

The move is part of a national Aids strategy launched earlier this year, which has been criticised as coming too late.

The World Health Organisation says southern Africa as a whole will be devastated by Aids in the next decade.

Many countries in the region are expected to lose more than one fifth of their population to the disease - an epidemic equivalent to Europe's Bubonic Plague in the Middle Ages.