HIV/AIDS cases in China on the rise: reports
AIDS activists gather to form a red ribbon, marking the World’s AIDS day in Zhengzhou, central China’s Henan province on December 1, 2010. A retired senior Chinese health official Chen Bingzhong, 78, who has advanced liver cancer, called for two of the country’s most powerful leaders to take responsibility for a huge 1990s blood-selling AIDS scandal in Henan province. CHINA OUT AFP PHOTO
The number of new HIV/AIDS cases in China are rising, according to information released by state media just one day before World AIDS Day, Reuters reported.
Rates among college students and older men are particularly higher and rising. According to figures from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 48,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS have been reported in China in 2011. Nearly 82 percent of those new cases were transmitted through sexual intercourse, up from 11.6 between 1985 and 2005, Reuters reported.
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In total, more than 780,000 people will be infected with the AIDS virus by the end of this year, the Associated Press reported. Increased rates of HIV hit China largely because of unsanitary blood plasma buying schemes and tainted transfusions in hospitals, the AP reported.
According to Reuters, HIV positive men 60 and above soared from 483 in 2005 to 3,031 in 2010, making up 8.9 percent of the cases in the country. In total, this age group makes up 11 percent of AIDS cases in China, with 2,546 men.
The Chinese government, which ignored AIDS throughout the 1980s and 90s, have become more compassionate towards the disease and taken a role in combating its spread among, the AP reported. Now more is spent on prevention programs, launching schemes to give universal access to anti-retro viral drugs to contain the disease, and introducing policies to curb discrimination, Reuters reported.
China is also implementing a national treatment as a prevention strategy to help the country meet its goal of bringing HIV and AIDS cases under control by 2015, CNN reported. Under this new program, China has conducted nearly 67 million HIV tests this year.
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