As the 19th World AIDS Day is observed all over the world today, the following figures have unfolded a severe scenario for the country's prevention efforts:

The total number of cases of AIDS reported in the past more than two decades has reached 183,733 nationwide, and 12,464 of those people have died according to the Health Ministry.

Those infected among prostitutes have increased from 0.02 percent in 1996 to more than 1 percent at present, according to the ministry's statistics. Educational campaigns launched by the government and non-governmental organizations in the past two decades have considerably increased the public's awareness of how people get infected and what to do to avoid being infected.

Yet, in this more and more open society, drug use and prostitution have become major channels for the spread of AIDS. Of all the infected, 37 percent said they got the virus by sharing contaminated needles in drug injections and 28 percent through unsafe sex.

Relevant investigations have found that only 38.7 percent of investigated prostitutes always use condoms in their business and 50.8 percent drug users share needles in drug injections.

The message from these figures is that a great challenge is ahead in the fight against the further spread of AIDS.

Policies by the central government have provided free consultations, tests and treatment for AIDS patients, free medical care for AIDS-suffering pregnant women to prevent their babies from being infected, and a special fund for AIDS prevention among homosexuals.

Another plan will extend preventive measures to 70 percent of the high-risk groups by the end of 2007 and above 90 percent by the end of 2010; the dissemination of AIDS knowledge and the use of condoms will reach the same target in the same groups.

However, discrimination against AIDS patients and HIV carriers still constitutes a barrier to prevention.

Discrimination may segregate AIDS patients and HIV carriers, quite probably forcing them to hide their cases to avoid embarrassment or humiliation.

With such a mentality, some prostitutes, though infected, may still continue in business even without preventive measures, and infected drug users still share needles with others. This certainly increases the danger for more people to be infected.

Care for AIDS patients will help them treat their disease in a positive manner and also encourage those who are infected but afraid of seeing a doctor to seek medical treatment.

AIDS patient Wang Mengcai said that he was not relieved of the psychological pressure of being attached to such a stigma until Premier Wen Jiabao shook hands with him in 2003.

We do not know where the danger is unless we show concern for the infected patients and let them enjoy their own rights of being treated and cared for in the open.

(China Daily December 1, 2006)