Soon after Zhou Yi's HIV positive status was known by his colleagues, he found them sterilizing their office telephone with alcohol, and refusing to use the microwave oven.

Then he quit. "I quit (two years ago) not because my boss made me, but because I couldn't stand the discrimination any more," said Zhou, from Shanghai, at a Workshop for Discrimination in the Workplace hosted by the International Labour Organization in Beijing on Friday.

Zhou, still unemployed, is just one of many people living with HIV who lost or changed their jobs due to workplace discrimination.

A survey conducted by UNAIDS and China, found 23.3 percent of 2,096 HIV-positive workers claimed they had been denied employment, and many did not expose their positive status for fear of discrimination.

There are an estimated 700,000 people now living with HIV in China, including about 75,000 AIDS patients. Last year, China reported that AIDS had become the country's leading cause of death among infectious diseases for the first time.

The workshop set the new international labor standard on HIV and AIDS, passed by ILO in June, and which has been ratified by China. The standard sets principles and provides recommendations on protecting workers' employment and medical treatment rights.

Dr Richard Howard, senior specialist for the ILO AIDS program in Asia Pacific, said: "China has an advanced policy framework to protect the rights of people with HIV."

Li Chuangchun, an official with the All China Federation of Trade Unions, said China took action to protect HIV positive workers' rights ahead of the international standard.

China began implementing a regulation on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in 2006. The 2008 Law on the Promotion of Employment stipulates that employers cannot deny jobs to carriers of infectious diseases.

However, workplace discrimination is still fierce as the UNAIDS report suggests. UNAIDS officer Xue Cheng said the problem was not a lack of laws, but a shortage of detailed regulations and lax law enforcement.

Michael Shiu, vice president of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said the priority should be increasing public awareness.