UNFPA warns that the anticipated return of 100's of thousands of Sudanese refugees, once peace returns to the south and west, could lead to a further spread of HIV/AIDS.

2.6% of the general of the general population is already affected, making Sudan the country with the highest infection rate in North Africa and the Middle East region.

Infection rates are particularly high among vulnerable groups, such as internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees.

Data from the mid-1990s onwards suggested the infection rates had risen rapidly in the conflict-affected areas of southern and western Sudan.

According to a national prevalence and behaviour survey conducted in 2002, HIV infection prevalence was already 4% among pregnant women attending clinics in the refugee camps.

Information from some voluntary counselling and testing centres had found preliminary HIV infection rates of 4 to 10% among those tested in the southern town of Rumbek and 17 to 21% in Yambio, near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"Sudan is on the verge of an HIV/AIDS epidemic," says Professor Ali Biely of Ahsad University in Omdurman, near Khartoum. "Little," he added, was "being done about it because of the urgency of the humanitarian crisis and the need to respond to those that are immediately dying from curable diseases".