By Ben Hirschler

LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) - The world risks becoming complacent in the fight against AIDS, the head of a global business organisation set up to fight the disease said on Tuesday.

John Tedstrom, executive director of the Global Business Coalition (GBC) on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, fears recent progress in rolling out life-saving drugs has deflected attention from the fact infections are still spiralling upwards.

"There is danger in complacency. If we are complacent in what we have done and what we are doing, we risk being complicit in a growing tragedy in terms of lives lost," he said in an interview during a visit to London.

Tedstrom is concerned the global fight against the disease has started to plateau, with last year's international AIDS conference in Toronto marking a shift towards strategic management rather than emergency action.

"We are getting treatment out in Africa more than we did but I think we are watching the wrong metric," he said.

"We are seeing growth year on year (in drug treatment) but we are not watching the fact that the number of people in Africa who become HIV positive every day is still 10 times greater than the number of people who go on ARVs (anti-retrovirals)."

The AIDS virus infects around 40 million people worldwide, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNAIDS, the U.N. programme on HIV/AIDS.

Businesses, particularly in Africa, are often on the front line in the battle and have a vested interest in tackling the virus, which typically hits individuals aged 15 to 45 years, who should be at their most economically productive.

Companies are also well placed to help, since prevention and treatment schemes are frequently most practical in the workplace. Mark Moody-Stuart, chairman of both the GBC and miner Anglo American Plc <AAL.L>, said more companies needed to recognise that action on AIDS was in their self-interest in all regions where HIV was spreading fast.

"There is hardly a major company on this planet that doesn't have IT service centres in India or China," he noted.

The GBC in January signed up its first Japanese member, Sumitomo Chemical Co Ltd <4005.T>, but Tedstrom wants a lot more firms in Japan and elsewhere to come on board.

"I'm not satisfied with having 230 member companies," he said. "We have to have many, many, many more companies engaged in taking care of their employees and their families and their communities."

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