Abstinence, being faithful and condom use -- dubbed the ABC of HIV-Aids prevention -- constitute insufficient protection for millions of girls and women in sub-Saharan Africa.

This message came through a live screen interview with Unicef executive director Carol Bellamy at a press launch in Johannesburg yesterday of two United Nations reports on Aids. Bellamy was in Addis Ababa attending the African Union Summit.

The documents were the 2004 Report on the Global Aids Epidemic --released in advance of the 15th International Aids Conference to be held later this month in Bangkok, Thailand -- and the Report on the Secretary-General's Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV-Aids in Southern Africa.

They are the products of UNAids, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV-Aids, and the labour of governments and Aids activists who had conducted worldwide research.

Three focuses of the reports, relating to women, included: -- intergenerational sex; -- the importance of women getting an education; and -- violence against women.

"While there was a pattern of girls having sex with men between five and seven years their elder and becoming infected within a year of losing their virginities, young married women who might be faithful were also at risk because of frequent unprotected sex," Bellamy said.

The press conference also heard that in Africa, where women were infected at an earlier age than men, the gap in HIV prevalence between the sexes was growing.

Violence against girls and women, an accellerant to the spread of HIV-Aids, was growing globally, she said.

The reports also said that although global spending on Aids had increased from $300-million in 1996 to nearly $5-billion in 2003, it was less than half of what would be needed by 2005 in developing countries.

"The estimated $20-billion would provide antiretroviral therapy to just over six-million people, of which four-million were in sub-Saharan Africa; support 22-million orphans; provide voluntary counselling and testing for 100-million adults; school based Aids education for 900-million students and peer counselling services for 60-million young people not in school," said Mark Stirling, director of the UNAids Regional Support Team.

The reports further noted that in sub-Saharan Africa, adult HIV prevalence appeared to have stabilised.

"However, a stable prevalence is only possible if Aids-associated deaths are replaced by new infections," said Sterling.

"Thus, in sub-Saharan Africa, a stable prevalence still represents more than two-million new infections each year."

The reports compared new estimates for worldwide Aids prevalence for 2003 with revised estimates for 2001 based on improved methodologies.

"This is the best way we know how to obtain a more accurate picture of the Aids epidemic," said Stirling.

"Although the new global estimates are slightly lower than the previously published estimates, the actual number of people living with HIV has not decreased, rather the epidemic continues to grow based on revised 2001 estimates."

Outside sub-Saharan Africa, the reports said: n Asia was now home to some of the fastest-growing Aids epidemics in the world; n in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, diverse epidemics were under way, showing no signs of abating; -- in Oceania, Latin America and the Caribbean, the total number of people living with HIV continued to rise; -- in the Middle East and North Africa, 75 000 people acquired HIV in the past year, bringing the number of people living with it to 480 000; and -- in high income areas of the world, the number of infected people continues to rise but annual Aids deaths have continued to slow because of the availability of antiretroviral treatment.

Stirling said the global report, released every two years, enabled concerned people "to take stock of where we are with the epidemic and what we need to deal with". – Sapa.