With 270,000 people newly infected with HIV in 2005 alone, the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) region faces the world's most rapidly expanding AIDS epidemic, and treatment and preventive measures must be urgently boosted, United Nations officials said.

"AIDS is one of the greatest challenges facing Eastern Europe and Central Asia today," the executive director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS Peter Piot told in the first regional AIDS conference in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in Moscow. "Fear and stigma are truly the best friends of HIV. To get ahead of the epidemic, stigma and discrimination must be tackled head-on, and HIV prevention and treatment services must be urgently scaled up," he said in his keynote address.

An estimated 1.6 million people are living with the disease across the region, and in several countries the epidemic shows signs of crossing from groups most at risk into the general population.

A significant increase in both financial resources and political commitment over the past two years suggest that the pieces are falling into place for regional and international partners to effectively tackle the epidemic. National health spending in many countries of the region is beginning to expand. Domestic spending on AIDS in Russia is slated to increase by 20 times in 2006 to over $100 million. In 2005, Russian federation president Vladimir Putin established HIV prevention as a national priority.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the fund is now the largest external donor for efforts to prevent and treat HIV and tuberculosis, having already committed more than $700 million in the region. A significant investment of up to $300 million is being made in Russia, which has increased its domestic spending on HIV in parallel.

While global fund-financed programmes in the region are still young, by the end of 2005, they had reached more than 2.1 million people with AIDS prevention activities and provided HIV testing and counselling for more than 700,000 people - an essential measure for both preventing and treating the disease.

In a related development, renowned British actress Naomi Watts, has been appointed a special UNAIDS representative and will use her talent and profile to raise AIDS awareness and give greater voice to the needs of people living with HIV worldwide.