Italian Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia warned on Wednesday that Italians underestimate the AIDS threat is dangerous.

Young people, on whom public awareness campaigns fail to make any impression, are especially at risk because their behavior is often dictated by a need for "transgression", Sirchia said at a major AIDS conference in the city of northwest Italy Genoa, the key official event of World AIDS Day in Italy.

According to the latest figures, the downward trend in new HIV infections in Italy has stopped and numbers are now rising again, with one person being infected every two hours.

"The tendency to underestimate it is the biggest enemy now in the fight against AIDS," said Sirchia. "People know you no longer die from it and so they think there's less risk."

In Italy after 1995, when the number of new cases was 12,000, new HIV infections fell steadily, reaching 3,500 in 2002. But lastyear 4,000 Italians contracted the virus that leads to AIDS.

Source: Xinhua