China had an accumulative 135,630 cases of reported HIV infection by the end of September, said Vice Health Minister Wang Longde on Monday.

The cases involve 31,143 AIDS patients and 7,773 fatalities. The five provinces and autonomous regions of Yunnan, Henan, Xinjiang, Guangxi and Guangdong reported more than 10,000 cases each, accounting for 77 percent of the country's total, said Wang at a national tele-conference on HIV/AIDS prevention and control.

Drug abuse is still the main cause of HIV infection, blamed for 40.8 percent of the total infections, while illegal blood selling and sex without protection have respectively led to 23.0 percent and 9.0 percent of the infections. Infections through unknown channels account for 23.4 percent of the total, said Wang, who believed that most of such infections occurred due to unprotected sex.

"Although the epidemic is still spreading at a comparatively low speed in the country, the number of infection cases is still rising, especially among certain groups of people and in several regions," said Wang.

The infection rate among sex workers increased from 0.02 percent in 1996 to 0.93 percent in 2004 and the rate in pregnancy in high-risk regions increased from zero in 1997 to 0.26 percent in 2004.

"This indicates that the epidemic is spreading from high-risk groups to ordinary people, and that China is in a critical period for AIDS prevention," Wang noted.

Experts estimate the officially recorded cases only account for some 12.7 percent of the actual infection number, which means that China now has about 840,000 HIV carriers including some 80,000 AIDS patients.

(Xinhua News Agency November 28, 2005)