The Chinese capital officially registered 973 new HIV/AIDS cases
in the first 10 months of this year, up 53.71 percent from a year
earlier, a health official said on Wednesday.
"Incidents of the disease are still on the rise in Beijing and
it is spreading from the high-risk groups of people to the general
population," Jin Dapeng, head of the Beijing Municipal Health
Bureau, told a working conference on AIDS prevention.
No specific figures were immediately available about which
groups of people were involved in the 973 new cases and how many
for each group.
Bureau statistics revealed that as of the end of October,
Beijing had registered 4,663 HIV/AIDS cases since 1985. These
included 171 foreigners, 964 locals and 3,524 from other
places.
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Needle sharing and sex remained the main transmission routes,
Jin said.
"The task remains very tough for Beijing. AIDS prevention among
the migrant population is a new challenge." He noted that more than
70 percent of HIV/AIDS sufferers were migrants, a group which
accounted for about a quarter of the city's population.
"Beijing has yet to work out a specific policy on AIDS
prevention among migrants. It will be a priority in our future
work."
Also, Jin said, members of high-risk groups refuse to take
HIV/AIDS tests out of fear of discrimination.
To improve the monitoring of AIDS in the city, health
authorities would keep close watch over high-risk groups, such as
people working at the entertainment venues, beauty salons and
massage parlors where the sex trade could take place, Jin said.
"They'll be obliged to be tested for HIV/AIDS infection," he
said.
Apart from that, local education authorities would order all of
the city's middle schools and universities to offer courses on AIDS
prevention and provide relevant literature at their libraries, as
part of the effort to disseminate knowledge about AIDS prevention
among students, he added.
The number of HIV/AIDS sufferers in China was estimated to be
650,000, according to the last major survey in 2005 by the Ministry
of Health, Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS and World
Health Organization (WHO). The actual number was thought to be much
higher.
China had 183,733 officially reported HIV/AIDS cases last
year.
AIDS spreading to younger people
HIV is spreading to younger people and those with advanced
educational backgrounds, figures released by the Shanghai Public
Health Clinical Center showed Wednesday.
The center has so far received 77 HIV patients this year, and
about 70 percent of them have good educational backgrounds.
Most of them are between the ages of 20 and 40. Fourteen of the
patients were born after 1980.
"The new HIV carriers this year are much younger and have better
educational backgrounds than in the past," Sun Hongqing, a doctor
at the center, said.
It has been reported that the most common way to spread HIV in
this city is through sexual intercourse.
Sexually transmitted diseases of all types are becoming
increasingly common in Shanghai.
In March alone, the city reported 935 cases of syphilis,
accounting for more than a quarter of the new cases of serious
infectious diseases in the city.
Sun attributed the spread of HIV to a lack of knowledge about
sex and sexually transmitted diseases.
"They just don't know much about sexual health, such as how to
use a condom, and then many of them forget all the basics. Some of
them are just happy to take the risk," Sun said.
Shanghai reported its first HIV infection in 1987. By the end of
last year, 2,313 infections had been reported. One hundred people
have died of the disease.
The Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center receives funding from
the Shanghai municipal government.
The center was designed as an integrated facility encompassing
clinical therapeutics, teaching and research.
The center aims to improve the city's public health system and
clinical treatment of infectious disease and to create a platform
for cooperation on public health and research, in order to upgrade
Shanghai's research capabilities.
"We are planning to introduce more psychological interventions
for HIV patients during our therapy sessions," Chen Liang, a
professor at the center, said.
"We need to help them accept the reality of their illness and
rebuild their self confidence to go back to society."
Next Saturday is the 20th annual World AIDS Day.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, November 22,
2007)