Southwest China's Guizhou Provincehas witnessed a rapid increase of HIV infections in recent years.

According to the provincial health authority, the province reported 2,441 HIV positive cases by the end of September this year. The number of HIV carriers in the province rose 192 percent year-on-year to 830 in the first nine months of this year.

The province's HIV positive cases recorded in the 2003-2004 period doubled the sum for the decade before 2003, said He Chongyuan, head of the provincial health authority.

Liu Hongxiu, vice governor of Guizhou, said that use of needles by illegal drug users was the main driver of the HIV epidemic in the province. At the same time, infections of unsafe sex are on the rise, and those transmitted from mothers to babies, according to Liu.

Guizhou started AIDS monitoring in 1986 and detected its first HIV case in 1993.

There are now approximately 840,000 HIV infections on the Chinese mainland, according to the Ministry of Health.

(Xinhua News Agency November 23, 2005)