Twenty years after the Aids epidemic started, some people are becoming complacent about the disease. They are dangerously mistaken.

Aids has not developed into the full-blown plague in the UK many people feared in the early Eighties.

Remarkable improvements in medicine mean some people manage to live for years with HIV instead of this condition always being a precursor to Aids and death.

On the eve of World Aids Day, it's vital to recall figures show more people than ever before have been diagnosed with Aids in the UK this year.

Brighton and Hove has the highest rate of HIV infection in the South-East except for London, with more than 680 people affected and another 70 testing positive every year.

Although many of them are gay, figures show the number of heterosexuals with the disease is also rising.

Even though HIV treatments improve health and extend life, there is still no cure now and none on the immediate horizon.

World Aids Day should also encourage us not to look at this disease from an entirely local viewpoint. Aids is now the fourth biggest killer of people in the globe.

Some countries, particularly those in Africa, do face precisely the sort of epidemic that was feared in the UK and it is having devastating results.

Even after millions of pounds have been spent trying to prevent Aids, the message is still not getting across to many people here or abroad.