Relate country to region?

[Una Smith]

The HIV sequence database (http://hiv-web.lanl.gov) includes
the country where each sequence was sampled.  For mapping
and statistical analysis, we need to relate countries to the
larger geographic regions where they occur.  We use the ISO
country codes, so it would be ideal to use relational tables
that define the same set of countries.

Curators of most international collections have dealt with
this problem already.  What standard tables are available and/
or what do you use?

Thanks,

        Una Smith

Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS K-710, Los Alamos, NM  87545