"To educate people you don't have to be offensive," Senior Minister of State for Health Balaji Sadasivan was quoted as saying on the website of Channel NewsAsia, a Singapore-based regional Broadcaster.

"We must recognise there are conservative people in Singapore and there's no need to say the only way to educate people is to try do it in an in-your-face approach," Balaji said late Saturday.

Balaji warned in an address to medics last week that the number of new AIDS cases in Singapore was doubling every three to four years.

Figures from the World Health Organisation showed an estimated 4,000 Singaporeans had HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, he said. There are about three million Singaporeans living in the city-state and another 1.3 million foreigners.

"If we do not act, by 2010 we may have more than 15,000 HIV persons in Singapore," Balaji said.

"We are facing an alarming AIDS epidemic in Singapore," he said.

He said gay men's unsafe sexual practices were the biggest cause of concern amid the alarming rise in HIV/AIDS infection cases.

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