TEHRAN -- A university professor stressed on the need to give clear information to people on the dangers of acquiring the acquired immune deficiency virus, or AIDS, and turning the campaign against the disease into a national endeavor.

Dr. Bolkhari said that AIDS is considered a disease in the individual level and a crime as far as society is concerned. "AIDS ranks first in terms of causing stress and fear in members of society because there it is incurable and is spread in private. It spreads at random and cannot be controlled," he added.

On the other hand, an Iranian physician residing in Germany, Dr. Fatemi, said that about 15,000 people globally acquire AIDS each day. Ninety-five percent of this number lives in Third World countries, especially Africa.

He underlined that about 2,000 acquire the virus that causes AIDS in Germany alone each year, and 600 succumb to the disease. He said most AIDS carriers are in the ages of 20-40.

Dr. Fatemi stressed the role of information in the campaign against AIDS and pointed to the low statistics on the disease in Europe, saying the information campaign has helped raise the level of people's awareness and thereby decreased the incidence of the disease.

Dr. Sayyari, the deputy health minister, said that 96 percent of the HIV-positive in Iran are male.

"AIDS is the problem of two decades back. It has affected the economic, cultural, and spiritual aspects of life globally. In 2001, 40 million were suffering from AIDS, 22 million of which have died. The number of AIDS-infected persons is expected to reach 100 million in the next decade." In Iran, the first symptoms of AIDS were pinpointed in 1988. There are different ways of contracting AIDS. Eighty percent of AIDS sufferers in the world get the disease through sexual relations. In Iran 64 percent of sufferers are addicts who got the disease through contaminated needles, the deputy minister further said.

He went on to say that the number of AIDS carriers is increasing in Iran and has increased seven-fold in the last six years.

He pointed out that the country's prisons are some of the places people get infected with the AIDS virus, adding that the first AIDS epidemic occurred in a prison in 1996.

He further said that 10 billion rials are allocated for the prevention of AIDS and 9 billion rials for drugs to treat AIDS each year.