The reported number of HIV/AIDS cases in China has grown by nearly 30
percent this year compared with 2005, according to figures released
yesterday by the Ministry of Health.
Health officials attributed many of the new cases to better
reporting of existing sufferers although they warned the virus
appeared to be spreading from high-risk groups to the general
public.
The reported number of cases has grown to 183,733 this year.
This is up from 144,089 at the end of last year, according to
statistics announced by the Ministry of Health yesterday. Of the
reported cases 40,667 had developed into AIDS, statistics
showed.
Experts from the United Nations and the Ministry of Health
estimate that some 650,000 people in China carried HIV at the end
of December 2005. This suggests many people are unaware they have
the virus.
As of October 31 the number of people who've died in China as a
result of illnesses associated with the HIV virus was 12,464, Hao
Yang, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's Disease Control
Bureau, said Tuesday.
Hao added that the virus appeared to be spreading from so-called
high-risk groups to the general public.
Drug abuse accounted for 37 percent of the cases reported in the
first 10 months of the year while unsafe sexual contact had caused
28 percent, Hao explained. These two activities had caused most of
the infections, Hao added. Before 2002 only 10 percent of all
infections were caused by sexual contact.
Ministry officials who've been observing the monitoring sites
around the country have found that the percentage of sex workers
infected by HIV/AIDS had grown to 1 percent last year compared with
0.02 per cent in 1996.
HIV testing has discovered that the infection rate among
pregnant women in the provinces is serious. In southwest China's Yunnan Province it's about 1 percent. Such
statistics are the clearest evidence yet that the virus is
spreading from high-risk groups to the general public as a result
of unsafe sexual contact and drug abuse.
Hao said these two causes posed a great danger because effective
measures to dissuade people from such unsafe behavior weren't yet
in place.
An example is that according to an investigation by public
health workers only 38 percent of prostitutes in certain areas
insisted on using condoms. And about half of the drug abusers
surveyed still shared syringes while taking drugs, Hao said.
Sexual activity among gay men is also a source of new HIV/AIDS
infections. Statistics show that in some areas the infection rate
among gay men is between 1 and 4 percent.
Government officials have launched a concerted effort to prevent
and control HIV/AIDS in recent years. It has greatly enhanced HIV
testing and monitoring among both high-risk groups and the general
public which has helped public health workers identify cases.
The provincial government of Central China's Henan launched a wide-ranging investigation of
people who sold blood in the 1990s and found more than 30,000
carriers. The majority had been infected by contaminated blood.
Farmers from many regions, especially in Henan, Shanxi and Anhui,
sold blood in the 1990s to earn extra money.
Among the total reported cases this year 5.1 percent were caused
by people selling blood illegally or receiving infected blood from
hospitals.
The central government also offers free HIV testing, anti-virus
treatment and education for the children of HIV/AIDS sufferers.
Some 28,757 people in 31 provinces and regions received free
anti-viral treatment. By the end of this year the number will reach
to 30,000.
(China Daily November 22, 2006)