LONDON — AIDS activists across the globe waved symbols of hope and held religious services and candlelight vigils Friday on World AIDS Day, seeking to rally a world they say is in danger of surrendering to complacency and ignorance about the global epidemic.
Commemorative flowers, quilts and candles joined with brasher attention-grabbing efforts as activists organized condom convoys and smashed down walls to raise awareness of AIDS and HIV.
They warn that the disease continues to devastate sub-Saharan Africa and is finding new ground amid the struggling economies of the former Soviet Union. Infection rates also are rising once again in developed Western countries as many people lose their sense of urgency about the disease.
According to a U.N. report issued this week, 36.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, 5.3 million of whom were infected in the past year. It is expected that 3 million people will die from AIDS this year, 80 percent of them in Africa.
The United Nations' message for the 13th World AIDS Day was that men must take responsibility for their behavior to stop the spread of the deadly virus.
"Men can make a particular difference — by being more caring, by taking fewer risks and by facing the issue of AIDS head-on," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.
In the United States, about 250 people gathered at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco, where activists, artists and officials remembered those who had died. Names of loved ones were written on leaves which were then planted with a tree.
In New York, names of the more than 105,000 people who have died from HIV/AIDS in the city since the early 1980s were read out by friends, family members and advocates at a 24-hour vigil at City Hall Plaza.
"These are people who I know — patients and friends," said Susan Novales, a nurse who has worked with infected patients since 1989. "I always want to (read) but it's hard. It's like working with this population. You want to help but it's hard."
President Clinton visited an AIDS clinic in Washington and addressed a World AIDS Day summit at Howard University.
"Prevention is the most effective tool in our arsenal," Clinton said. "No matter the cultural or religious factors to overcome, families must talk about the facts of life before too many more learn the facts of death."
He added that it is time to recognize AIDS as "an international security crisis."
At a vigil in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, participants planned to unfurl a quilt stitched by people with AIDS and those working with them. Activists distributed leaflets and red AIDS ribbons at popular youth hangouts and shopping centers.
In Britain, where a candlelight service was planned for St. Paul's Church in central London, pop star Robbie Williams spearheaded high-profile efforts to raise awareness. Williams used a 50-ton crane to smash a wall — emblazoned "Break the Silence on HIV/AIDS" — at a disused east London factory.
"I've seen the way AIDS is tearing so many young lives apart, but I've also seen people fighting back — spreading the word about prevention, looking after orphans, supporting each other," said Williams, a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, which estimates AIDS has orphaned more than 13 million children around the world.
Around the world, campaigners aimed education activities at those most vulnerable — the poor, the marginalized and the young.
In India's capital New Delhi, activists marched through the main red-light district and talked to teen-age prisoners at Tihar Jail.
A day after the Vatican reiterated its refusal to approve the use of condoms to prevent AIDS, two Italian ministers called on manufacturers to cut the price of condoms. Equal Opportunity Minister Katia Bellillo said many young people complain about the cost — about $1 per condom.
"Prevention with condoms must become a habit," said Health Minister Umberto Veronesi, a doctor who is a political independent.
Activists used a vast range of media to convey their message. Britain's National AIDS Trust produced leaflets and a Web site urging people to "Make a Difference," while telephone users in New Delhi and Bombay were greeted with a recorded message warning that "anyone can get AIDS, everyone can prevent it."
Cartoon leaflets and condoms were distributed in Athens' main Syntagma Square, while in Vietnam 11 buses decorated with condoms roamed around Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City distributing condoms and AIDS-awareness pamphlets.
In South Africa, which has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates, former president Nelson Mandela encouraged greater openness about the disease.
"Let's speak openly about HIV/AIDS and sex education, let's be more tolerant to those who are infected and let us encourage those who are infected to tell a friend," he said in an AIDS Day message carried in the Sowetan newspaper.
In Russia, lectures and publicity campaigns also targeted the disease, which once was widely regarded as a symptom of Western degeneracy. Some 30,000 people in Russia tested positive this year for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the health ministry said — almost as many as in the past 13 years combined.
In China, where AIDS has reached crisis proportions, officials handed out condoms and newspapers carried touching articles about AIDS victims in a campaign to tackle public ignorance.
"Condom Men" in Bangkok, Thailand, wore green and orange fluorescent costumes shaped like condoms and sought contributions from commuters at train and bus stations. The money will be used to buy baby formula for infants born to HIV-infected mothers.
At a hospital garden in the southern Australian city of Melbourne, children of HIV/AIDS sufferers planted a new rose hybrid — the Hope Rose — in a ceremony aimed at inspiring those who have the disease not to give up.