The spread of AIDS could damage China's economic development and affect the nation's "rise or decline", the health minister said on Wednesday, stressing the need to take strong preventive measures.
On the eve of World AIDS Day, Minister Gao Qiang said China aimed to keep the total of people infected by the HIV virus that causes AIDS to below 1.5 million by 2010. His forecast was sharply lower than the World Health Organisation estimate of 10 million if nothing is done to prevent transmission.
"AIDS prevention work is an issue relating to the quality of the population, economic development, social stability and the rise or decline of the country," Gao told a news conference.
The central government was spending 800 million yuan ($99 million) on AIDS prevention this year, up from 100 million yuan in 2002, the minister said, adding that China was capable of effectively containing the spread of the virus.
The estimated number of Chinese infected with HIV through contaminated blood transfusions was 70,000, he said. China had cut the number of new cases by "striking hard" against illegal blood sales and closing down grassroots blood donation and collection stations, he said.
The number of confirmed HIV cases in China hit 135,630 at the end of September, a rise of 52 percent over a year before, but poor monitoring and official obstruction still obscured the true scale of the epidemic, top AIDS official Wang Longde said on Monday.
But China's vast size and dilapidated health system meant that only a fraction of HIV-positive people were officially diagnosed with the virus, and even fewer received medical treatment for full-blown AIDS.
Vice Premier Wu Yi said this week that the reported total of cases probably represented 16.1 percent of the real number - which would give China an estimated 840,000 cases.
The UN Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS said that number could be anywhere between 430,000 and 1.5 million. Some international groups and Chinese AIDS activists put it in the millions.
Gao said his ministry had drafted a five-year AIDS prevention action plan which was now awaiting cabinet approval.
China's prevention measures included educating students at 90,000 high schools and 2,100 universities and farmers in 740,000 villages, the minister said.
Gao said the government would launch a campaign on Thursday to educate millions of migrant workers, peasants who flock to cities in search of higher-paying jobs. China has boosted official accountability and vowed to prosecute officials for cover-ups which lead to the spread of AIDS, Gao said. About 2 million people, including drug users, had undergone tests, and about 40,000 tested positive, he said. He did not say over what period the tests were conducted.
China recorded its first outbreak of AIDS in 1989. Last year, between 21,000 and 75,000 Chinese died of AIDS, many of them poor, rural residents who died without treatment or even diagnosis, according to the United Nations.
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