He told a seminar on investment in Asia's health in Shanghai that the State Council has already set up a national committee with members from 26 ministries and commissions to work together to control HIV/AIDS in China.

Wang said at the seminar, held on the sidelines of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Asian Development Bank, that people from various backgrounds are working on the nation's strategies for the control of HIV/AIDS in the most populous country in the world. However, he did not go into details.

Chinese official statistics for last year indicate the total number of reported HIV/AIDS infected persons in China is 30,736, with 684 of them already dead.

However, it is widely believed the actual figure could be more than 850,000.

HIV/AIDS, of little concern to the Chinese people just a decade ago, has now become one of the major problems on the minds of health officials in China. They have warned that with HIV/AIDS infection spreading from high-risk persons to the average population, the disease in China has entered a stage where rapid growth is threatened.

About 100 million yuan (US$12 million) has been invested in the fight against HIV/AIDS annually for the past five years in China, according to Chinese Ministry of Health sources.

The efforts of China to control the disease have been attracting attention from around the world.

"China can lead (in the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS) in the region and beyond the region," said Michel Sidibe, from UNAIDS - the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS - at the seminar.

Apart from the government's measures to contain the disease, China also reaches out actively for international cooperation in the field, said Wang.

(China Daily May 10, 2002)