The government may impose jail terms on people who donate HIV-contaminated blood, deputy prime minister Najib Razak said today, sounding the alarm over rising cases of the disease.

If effective measures are not taken to curb HIV, some 300,000 Malaysians among a population of 26 million will contract the virus by 2015, he warned.

"There have been several cases of HIV and AIDS sufferers who donated blood. We want to make it a crime," Najib was quoted as saying by Bernama news agency.

"You can kill people by that act. If you knowingly donate blood when you are infected, you could cause the death of other people. That's why we are taking it seriously."

Najib, who earlier chaired a cabinet committee meeting on AIDS, said disease prevention and control legislation would be amended to provide for the tough tough legislation.

Last year, 643 blood donors were found to be infected with various viruses, seven of them with HIV/AIDS, according to Bernama.

Najib said that the rising trend of HIV infections, including higher numbers of women contracting the disease, was a cause for concern.

"On average, 6,000 HIV/AIDS cases are reported annually, 70 percent of them involving drug addicts," he said.

Among the measures decided upon at the meeting to contain the disease is a requirement for all of Malaysia's 13 states to conduct HIV/AIDS screening on Muslim couples intending to get married.