Kampala- If the current annual increase in the number of HIV infections in Uganda go unchecked then the country's economic growth rate will be halved by 2025, medical authorities warned Thursday.

The number of people getting infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has been on the increase in the impoverished East African country, from a yearly average of
90,000 before 2002 to the current 130,000.

"Between 2008 and 2025, the annual GDP (Gross Domestic Product) loss is expected to be 1.2 per-cent due to the AIDS pandemic and the total GDP growth will be reduced to 3 per cent from the current 6.4 per cent in 2025," the director general of the state-run Uganda Aids Commission, Dr Kihumuro-Apuuri, told a news conference.

UAC officials say that the economic sectors most affected by the AIDS epidemic are tourism, fishing and education and that as a result, the government is currently implementing a 30-million-dollar programme to begin reducing infections by June 2008.

"If the project is implemented, the GDP loss per annum will fall to 0.9 per cent. For the past three years, the trend has been worse. AIDS infections have been on the increase and we have to reduce them," Kihumuro said.

Uganda received international acclaim for embarking on an aggressive program that reduced infection rates in the country from 30 per cent in the early 1990s to the current
6.7 per cent.

However, the country has lost over a million people to the disease since it was first diagnosed here in the early 1990s while a similar number of others have the virus that causes AIDS.

President Yoweri Museveni has also expressed worry that AIDS is decimating his army and that more soldiers are dying from the disease than from battle.

"HIV/AIDS is the greatest challenge the army faces. More UPDF soldiers have died from HIV/AIDS than at the war front," the Ugandan leader was quoted by The New Vision newspaper, as saying. "If you die or get sick from AIDS, you let us down."

The president did not give comparative statistics but an independent newspaper, The Weekly Observer, reported Thursday that a quarter of the Ugandan army or about
15,000 soldiers are infected with the AIDS virus.

The newspaper quoted a recent report from the London-based Conflict, Security and Development Group as saying that the AIDS infection rate among Ugandan soldiers is about 30 per cent, almost five times more than the national average. (dpa)