Aids cases rising by 30% a year in China
More than 600,000 people in China are estimated to be infected with the Aids virus with the number increasing by 30% each year.
China's health minister says the Government has launched a five-year plan to reduce the increase from 30% to 10% annually.
Although the prevalence of the HIV virus and Aids is still low - just 0.5% of China's 1.27 billion population - swift action is still required says Zhang Wenkang.
The plan calls for Aids awareness in the sex education curriculum for 15-year-olds, prevention messages from leading actors and condom vending machines.
Zhang has addressed the first UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/Aids.
Five years ago, about 40% of China's HIV cases were the result of the illegal selling of blood, primarily in rural areas where dirty needles were often used, he said.
Following a Government crackdown on illegal blood-buying, the percentage of HIV cases from tainted blood has dropped to 4 to 6%.
About 70% of current HIV cases are the result of intravenous drug use, Zhang said. Another 10% are infected through heterosexual or homosexual relations and a smaller percentage from mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
Professor Shao Yiming, deputy director of China's National Centre for Aids Prevention and Control, explained that the numbers are just estimates. As a developing country China can only do limited Aids testing and people in rural areas often don't recognise the HIV virus, he said.
Zhang said the estimate of more than 600,000 HIV sufferers was made by epidemiologists based on the actual number of reported HIV cases _ 23,905 at the end of March. At that time, there were also 956 Aids patients and 537 confirmed deaths, he said.
UN figures on Aids in China indicate some 500,000 adults were living with HIV or Aids in 1999 and that 17,000 died from Aids during that year.
