One in four new infections occurs in Asia and 1,500 die in the region each day. The disease has spread to all provinces in China, the world's most populous nation, while India has the second-highest number of Aids/ HIV patients after South Africa.

But political will to battle the illness is lacking in most of the region's governments despite the huge potential toll in lives and missed development goals as millions of households are pushed into poverty, officials said at an international Aids conference in the western Japanese city of Kobe.

Failure to fight Aids will have a critical economic impact on the region. The United Nations estimates losses could total $29 billion from Aids alone by 2010 if nothing is done now.

Governments need to view Aids as a threat on the scale of a natural disaster such as the tsunami last December that killed or left missing 232,000 people, said J.V.R. Prasada Rao, Director of the Regional Support Team for UNAIDS, the UN agency dedicated to fighting the disease.

"The only real barrier to scaling up the response to HIV is one of perception," he told a conference session.

"The virus doesn't kill hundreds of thousands at a thunderous stroke like the tsunami, and it doesn't provide vivid television pictures," he added. "It is more like a silent tsunami."