India must take urgent action to halt the spread of HIV if it is to avoid an Aids pandemic, the shadow international development secretary has said.

Warning that the country is in denial about the scale of its HIV infection rate, Caroline Spelman said the Indian government must act quickly to avoid a human disaster similar to that seen in countries such as South Africa.

"When you look at the size of the population in India with a billion people, I mean even a two or three per cent infection rate means millions of people infected and debilitated and ultimately dying from this disease," she told ePolitix.com.

"You have got the Ministry of Health saying its not going to happen to us."

Spelman said she was shocked by the level of government complacency during a recent visit to the country.

"When I went out to India, spoke to the minister of health, I got exactly that complacency. 'This won't happen in good Hindu families' - 'It isn't going to happen to us'," she told this website.

Data from antenatal clinics reveals that HIV/Aids has "already reached epidemic levels in India", the shadow minister warned.

"When pregnant women come in for the checks on their unborn child they have a blood test and this shows you the extent of the infection in the population and it has hit the epidemic level," added Spelman.

The level of infection in India could soar to sub-Saharan African levels unless the government takes immediate action to educate the population.

"The trick in India would be to get in quickly. There is no sex education in Indian schools for example," she said.

"They need to move very quickly to prevent their infection rates rising from two or four per cent to these horrendous levels of Sub-Saharan Africa."

Spelman also warned that Africa is set to "fall further and further behind" as the Aids pandemic ravages its economically productive population.

"It is not hitting the aged and the young - it is wiping out the middle age population," she said.

"The most economically productive cohort in society is being obliterated and so you have grandparents raising grandchildren if the children are lucky, and if not they are raising themselves.

"Consequently you are creating a continent that is even more vulnerable to conflict and instability because it has lost its demographic balance."