China had 126,808 people who officially reported as HIV-positive
at the end of July, according to figures compiled over the past 20
years, but the estimated number of sufferers could be as high as
840,000, the Ministry of Health revealed on Friday.
The total registered number of AIDS patients both alive and dead
is 28,789, said Hao Yang, vice director of the ministry's Disease
Control Department.
According to the limited statistics, the ministry knows the
names of 7,375 people who have died of AIDS and HIV since 1985,
when the country reported its first case.
However, Hao said he still could not exactly tell the reported
number of HIV-positive people who are still alive.
The ministry, however, estimates the number of HIV-positive
people living in China at 840,000, including 80,000 AIDS
patients.
"The estimated number of HIV/AIDS sufferers may increase a lot
before this year's World AIDS Day, December 1, when the ministry
might release new epidemic information in China," said Wu Zunyou,
director of HIV/AIDS Control Center at the Chinese Center for
Disease Control and Prevention.
The July figure represents an increase of 57.5 percent on the at
least 80,000 that the ministry reported in December 2004.
The increase in the number of registered HIV carriers does not
mean the epidemic has spread quickly in the past months. It is
because places where the epidemic is the most serious have greatly
strengthened the monitoring work, Wu said.
For example, in central China's Henan
Province and southwest China's Yunnan
Province, HIV tests have been carried out among at least
600,000 high-risk people in recent years.
Generally speaking, the epidemic is still at a low level in
China, though it is serious in some areas, such as Henan, Yunnan,
northwest China's Xinjiang
Uygur Autonomous Region and southwest China's Sichuan
Province, Hao said.
The main causes of HIV/AIDS infection in China are drug abuse,
which is very serious in Yunnan; illegal blood sales, which were
widespread in Henan in the early 1990s; and unsafe sex.
However, the epidemic affected all 31 provinces, autonomous
regions and municipalities some years ago, Hao said.
Prevention and control work is at a vital stage now, Hao said,
because "our surveillance statistics indicate that the virus is
spreading from the high-risk groups to the general public."
For instance, Yunnan and Xinjiang reported that in some places
the HIV infection rate among pregnant women reached 0.6 to 0.8
percent, Hao said.
Blood tests taken in parts of those two regions for other
purposes have indicated an infection rate of 0.2 percent among the
general population.
(China Daily October 15, 2005)