Women are now bearing the brunt of the AIDS epidemic, especially among young adults, in what UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called a "terrifying pattern" in the galloping disease.
Opening a session to mark International Women's Day, Mr Annan said that women and girls accounted for more than half of the estimated 5 million newly-infected people with AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes the disease.
Moreover, among young people below 24 years of age, females make up nearly two thirds of those with HIV.
"Even a decade ago, statistics indicated that women were less affected," Annan said, "But a terrifying pattern has since emerged. All over the world women are increasingly bearing the brunt of the epidemic."
Jordan's Queen Noor told the meeting that in the Middle East a modest 600,000 people were thought to be living with HIV/AIDS and about 45,000 died last year.
But despite the seemingly low rates, 55 per cent of those infected were female as of 2002.
"Our strong sense of family and religious traditional may inhibit behavior that spreads the virus, but at the same time those traditions may inhibit testing and reporting of those who may be infected," she said.
Queen Noor, the widow of King Hussein, questioned the low rates because of the widespread stigma attached to the disease, saying many who carried the virus would simply rather die than be rejected by friends and family,