This was stated in a new World Bank report launched at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada.

According to the Report titled 'AIDS in South Asia: Understanding and Responding to a Heterogeneous Epidemic', more than 5.5 million people are infected with HIV in South Asia.

The Report focused on five countries in the region: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

It said in Bangladesh levels of risk are high, with potential for a substantial epidemic if there is significant spread among injecting drug user networks and their sexual partners.

According to the report, HIV infection among sex workers in Bangladesh remains at a low level.

"Bangladesh has a window of opportunity to saturate prevention programme coverage, particularly among female sex workers and also among men having sex with men and injecting drug users, wherever the latter sub populations are identified," it said.

The World Bank has supported efforts to fight AIDS in South Asia, and has committed US $380 million to date to support national programmes.

In Bangladesh, the Bank committed $20 million for the HIV/AIDS Prevention Project (HAPP), which supports scaling up of interventions among groups at high risk while strengthening overall programme management.

The new World Bank report on HIV said that the epidemic is increasingly being driven by the region's flourishing sex industry and injecting drug use.

The high-risk groups in the region include sex workers and their clients, injecting drug users and men having sex with men.

Contributing regional risk factors include widespread stigma and discrimination; poverty and inequality; illiteracy; the low social status of women and trafficking of women into commercial sex.

The risk factors also include porous borders; widespread migration; high levels of mobility; cultural restrictions on discussing sex; high rates of sexually transmitted infections; and limited condom use.

The report says halting the spread of the epidemic will depend on a two-pronged approach.

The first one is establishing effective prevention programmes for groups at increased risk of HIV infection such as sex workers and their clients, injecting drug users, and men who have sex with men.

And secondly, resolving the social and economic drivers of the epidemic such as poverty, stigma, and sex trafficking of women.

The report suggested that countries must tailor their HIV prevention programmes to suit their own local conditions rather than rely on generic global or regional approaches, which have failed to make a difference in individual countries.