AIDS is killing In China
China’s state-term news agency Xinhua reported that official figures show that AIDS claimed 6897 lives in China between January and September 2008, to head the list of infectious diseases in this country for the first time from the third position he held three years ago.
There were 264,302 confirmed cases of people living with HIV in September last year, said the Ministry of Health, 34,864 of them have since died, five times the number three years ago. The accumulation of cases is almost double the 2005 figure, which showed 135,630 Chinese were infected with the virus.
Although the Chinese government did not elaborate on the reasons for the increase of HIV / AIDS cases and deaths, a recent report by the Associated Press (AP) suggests that the Chinese government is willing to recognize just just the presence of the disease could be a factor.
There was no reaction to the figures from UNAIDS and the World Health Organization in Geneva, said the AP report, which mentions that the UNAIDS estimates there are 700,000 people living with HIV China, of which about 85,000 have AIDS.
According to Chinese authorities, AIDS came to China in 1982 and their first dead of the disease is three years later.
Since 2003 there has been a government policy of “four frees, one care” for all HIV carriers and AIDS patients in China. “Four releases are free HIV testing, free counseling and treatment for those infected by HIV has in rural areas, free drugs for all pregnant women living with HIV, and free education for children orphaned by AIDS.
The “custody” is to help impoverished people with AIDS and the eradication of AIDS-related discrimination “, said the Xinhua report.
According to the AP report, the spread of HIV in China was caused by contaminated blood transfusions and unsafe blood plasma, but a government report last year said that sex and drugs have now exceeded other causes of the spread of HIV in the country.
Earlier this week, said the AHN World Health Organization provides an increase of HIV / AIDS in Asia, infection rates among men who have sex with men, and this group urgently needs d ‘better access to health care if the rise is to be avoided.
Advise WHO on HIV / AIDS in the Western Pacific, Mssimo Ghidinelli told the press that the spread of HIV by men who have sex with men was much greater than they first thought.
WHO suggests there are approximately 10 million men who have sex with men in Asia, the highest of all regions of the world.
At the WHO Technical Consultation on the health sector response to HIV / AIDS held in Hong Kong on Wednesday, York Chow, Hong Kong Secretary for Food and Health, said that the HIV prevention among men who have sex with men was the main focus of the city five years, HIV / AIDS, which runs from 2006 to 2011.