The country's Minister of Health Zhang Wenkang describes the current situation of HIV/AIDS in China as "pressing."

Despite the fact that the number of people that have contracted the illness is still low compared with that in many other countries, the deadly disease has been spreading rapidly in the country since 1985, when the first case was discovered in Beijing.

The number of infections reported in the first half of the this year is 67.4 percent higher than that for the same period last year.

By September, 28,133 people in China have been reported infected with the HIV virus, including 1,208 AIDS patients and 641 deaths.

However, officials as well as experts have estimated that the actual number of people that have contracted the virus may be as high as 600,000.

The central government has developed a strategy to keep the number at under 1.5 million to the year 2010.

Zhang Konglai, a professor of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, however, said the plan is rather ambitious.

"If no effective countermeasures are taken, there may be 10 million infections by the year 2010," he said.

But Zhang nonetheless remains optimistic. "What is good and important is that the government has a strong commitment to address the problem."

To date all three ways of spreading the disease - through sex, blood transfusions and intravenous drug injections, or from mother to baby - have occurred in China.

Intravenous drug injection is, however, the leading way of spreading the virus, and is responsible for two-thirds of the transmissions in China.

The deadly disease is also spreading widely among illegal blood donors, most of whom are poor farmers.

With the increase of infections among women, the potential for the increase of mother-to-baby transmissions has increased.

An ominous trend is that the virus is beginning to spread among all groups of people, not just high-risk populations such as drug addicts and homosexuals. A lack of AIDS drugs has been a bottleneck impeding China's efforts in fighting the disease.

China has not developed any effective medicines itself, nor has it found any effective traditional Chinese medicines, although researchers in China have not slackened their efforts to come up with a cure.

The worldwide used "cocktail" treatment, which is a combination of several drugs and which has proved to be effective in curbing the HIV virus, has been introduced to China but is out of the reach of most infected people because of the high cost.

The cost of the "cocktail" treatment is about 8,000 yuan (US$970) per month per patient, a price that is unaffordable for most Chinese families.

The Chinese Government is negotiating with foreign manufacturers on lowering the price of AIDS drugs, according to Cao Yunzhen, deputy director of the National Center for AIDS Prevention and Control of the Ministry of Health.

(China Daily December 3, 2001)