UNITED NATIONS, June 5: Nafis Sadik, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy on HIV/Aids, said here on Saturday that China and Iran had made significant progress in the prevention and awareness about deadly HIV/Aids virus.

In an Interview at the start of the high-level meeting on HIV/Aids at the UN Headquarters, Ms Sadik said both China and Iran had made commitments at the highest level for the prevention and treatment of the disease.

She said that Iran had developed a good prevention and education programme which could be emulated by other Muslim countries.

“They have a very good programme, from which lessons can be learnt by India, Bangladesh and Pakistan,” the UN special envoy said.

Ms Sadik said that Iran government was very pragmatic in their approach to diseases ,including family planning programme.

She said that India, which had more than five million confirmed cases of HIV infected persons, needed to do more. “Their response is very uneven but they have good intentions,” she said.

In Pakistan, where the number of such cases is 80,000, not a very large number, Ms Sadik noted that in Karachi, where there is use of intravenous drugs the cases have increased significantly. In Pakistan, the disease is also spreading through sex workers and drug use. She said that in interior of Sindh and Northwest Frontier the cases of HIV/ Aids were significant.

However, Ms Sadik said that Pakistan government had also made commitment at the highest level to combat the disease. She said that at an Aids conference last year organized by a non-governmental organization in Islamabad, Pakistan’s Prime Minister had said all the things that needed to be done.

Pakistan, she said, had been very open and was using NGOs to spread awareness about the deadly virus. She disclosed that even the Pakistan army had a sex education programme, although there are no reports of any HIV/Aids cases in army at the moment. In India, she said, the disease was prevalent in Tamil Naidu, Maharashtra, Andra and Kerala where there was high rate of migrant level.