UN Aids chief calls for openness

Piot said China was becoming more candid about Aids

The head of the UN Aids programme has called for greater openness among countries that have been slow to admit the scale of the crisis facing them.

Speaking on a BBC programme, Dr Peter Piot said Aids would soon become an inescapable global problem.

His comments come after a BBC survey showed that many people around the world think their governments are not doing enough to fight the disease.

But Mr Piot said countries were co-operating more to tackle the epidemic.

'Nowhere safe'

Dr Piot, the executive director of UN Aids, warned that countries would not be able to distance themselves indefinitely from what he said was a "truly global phenomenon".

Graphs and charts of the survey's main findings

At-a-glance

"If you think of the fact that in 20 years' time about 70 million people will have become infected with HIV, they are connected with each other.

"No country will be safe from Aids when there are others which still have a major Aids problem."

The BBC survey suggested that people in China - where about one million people are believed to be infected with the Aids virus - are among the world's least informed about HIV/Aids.

But Dr Piot said the Chinese Government was making "good progress" in admitting the existence of an HIV/Aids problem in China, after years of denial.

He called on the international community to continue to encourage China to become more open about HIV/Aids.

Funding call

Dr Piot, speaking on the BBC World Service Talking Point programme, said the fight against HIV/Aids was being impeded by the lack of medical facilities in poorer parts of the world.

Watch Dr Peter Piot on Talking Point

"The overwhelming majority of people living with HIV in the developing world don't know they have it because they have not been tested," he said.

He said that in Africa, only about 75,000 HIV/Aids sufferers have access to anti-retroviral drugs - accounting for less than 2% of those who need it.

Dr Piot said that, while prices of anti-retroviral drugs had fallen as a result of deals with pharmaceutical companies, they needed to be brought down further.

"For the poorest countries, it will only be possible to provide this kind of treatment if there is also money coming from outside."