Teenagers were bearing the brunt of a 50-fold increase in AIDS cases in eastern Europe and central Asia, an EU AIDS conference in Dublin was told yesterday.
At the same time, the rate of HIV infection in Ireland has increased by almost a third in the past three years, according to the Minister for Health, Mr Martin.
Citing figures from the National Disease Surveillance Centre, he told the conference there were 207 new cases of HIV reported in the first two quarters of 2003.
This compares with 364 new cases in the whole of 2002, 299 in 2001 and 290 in 2000.
"The total number of HIV infections in Ireland is now at more than 3,000," he said.
But Ireland's AIDS problem, however difficult for society as a whole and tragic for the individuals, is dwarfed by what is happening in eastern Europe and central Asia.
In a video message to the Dublin Castle conference, which has been organised as a centrepiece of Ireland's EU presidency, the secretary general of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, said 80 per cent of new cases in eastern Europe and central Asia were young people.
The UN under secretary general and executive director of UNAIDS, Dr Peter Piot, provided a grim perspective on HIV/AIDS in the region.
It faced the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the world, he told delegates from more than 50 countries assembled for the two-day meeting.
The 30,000 people in the region living with HIV in 1995 had now grown to 1.5 million, he said. A UN study suggested the figure could be 2.1 million.
"And who would have thought that in the past year alone there would be 250,000 infections. Who would have thought that HIV prevalence in Russia and Ukraine could reach 1 per cent of adults and rising," said Dr Piot.
Dangerous myths surrounded our perception of HIV/AIDS, he told delegates, including the myth that the disease was an African problem and not a global one, or that European countries had defeated AIDS.
"Here in western Europe new HIV infections are again on the increase, a situation not seen since the 1980s.
"The results are clear - 30,000 to 40,000 new infections last year; an unacceptable occurrence for one of the richest regions in the world."
The rapid increase in disease incidence in eastern Europe and central Asia was "thriving" on the effects of social transformation, denial, stigma, social exclusion and homophobia, said Dr Piot.
"But what is particularly striking to me is that across Europe and central Asia young people are at the core of the AIDS epidemic. In many places this is actually an epidemic among teenagers."
The AIDS epidemic represented the worst health crisis in human history, according to Dr Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria.
"We have seen nothing like it in human history. It is already worse than the Black Death of the 14th century."
Mr Martin said that a significant change in the Irish figures was that heterosexual transmission had replaced intravenous drug use as the main mode of transmission.