PARIS, Dec 1: France’s glamorous first lady threw her considerable star power behind the global fight against Aids on Monday, as the world tallied the victims of the HIV virus that infects a new person every 15 seconds.

As ceremonies marked World Aids Day, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy signed on to become a goodwill ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which said it has provided lifesaving treatment to two million people living with HIV worldwide.

“I think the world has become used to Aids,” the model-turned-singer told a news conference in Paris. “We no longer see it as a scandal or an emergency.”

Bruni-Sarkozy, who lost her brother Virginio to Aids two years ago, said her work will focus on helping women and children infected with HIV, the virus that causes the disease.

She pledged to fight the stigma that is still attached to Aids in many countries.

“There is no greater cruelty than to be excluded from your own family and your own community because you are infected with a deadly disease,” she said.

Some 500,000 children are born each year infected with HIV and 290,000 of them died in 2007 as a result, the Global Fund said. With access to antiretroviral drugs, the risk of virus transmission from an HIV-positive mother to her baby can be slashed to less than five percent, it added.

An estimated 33 million people worldwide are infected with the HIV virus, the vast majority of them in Africa, but no country is spared.

In a rare government disclosure, Iran said on Monday it has registered more than 18,000 HIV-positive citizens and estimated the true number of infected to be as high as 100,000.

China — which for years also covered up the disease — vowed to do more to tackle the stigma. The government promised to strengthen education about Aids prevention, increase condom distribution and do more to reach high-risk groups. An estimated 700,000 Chinese have the virus.

The rate of HIV infection in Europe almost doubled between 2000 and 2007, reaching the highest level ever recorded in the region, the health agencies of the U.N. and European Union said in a report.

South Africa has an estimated 5.5 million people living with the HIV virus _ the highest total of any country. About 1,000 South Africans die each day of the disease and complications like tuberculosis.

Yet for years, the South African government of former President Thabo Mbeki played down the extent of the crisis. Mbeki himself doubted the link between HIV and AIDS. His health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, openly mistrusted conventional AIDS drugs and instead promoted the value of lemons, garlic, beetroot and the African potato.—AP