Pakistan will send five doctors and nurses each to India this month for specialised training in treating people with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

Pakistan chose India because of its vast experience in treating AIDS patients and due to similarity in social conditions and cost effectiveness, Pakistan's National AIDS Control Programme Manager Asma Bukhari said.

United Kingdom's Department of International Development will bear the expenses of the training, official APP news agency quoted Bukhari as saying in a briefing to Pakistan Health Secretary Syed Anwar Mehmood.

Officially, Pakistan has some 2,200 HIV positive cases, of which 246 are full-blown AIDS cases. However, health experts are sceptical of these numbers, saying the government's counting methods are based on random testing of only high-risk groups - such as prostitutes and drug addicts - rather than of the general population.

The World Health Organisation estimates that for every reported case in Pakistan, there may actually be another 100 to 5,000 people with HIV. That means the number of infected people could be as high as 200,000.