Posted on 11/23/2006 12:04:56 AM PST by MadIvan
The number of Chinese testing positive for HIV is growing dramatically according to new figures, adding to fears that a once-hidden epidemic is spreading through the country's booming sex trade.
By the end of October, 183,733 people had tested positive for the virus this year, compared to 144,089 for the whole of last year, a rise of almost 30 per cent in 10 months.
While local Aids activists say the government is still underestimating the crisis, international agencies said the increase was partly due to the extension of testing programmes as the authorities become more open about a disease whose infection rates it covered up for years. But they added that drug use and, particularly, the explosion in prostitution as the country's economic boom continues threatened to spread the disease more widely.
"With sex workers there are areas where the prevalence is worryingly high," said Joel Rehnstrom, who heads the United Nation project on Aids in Beijing. "That's where we are worried because through clients and partners it can spread to the general population."
As with other infectious diseases, China's Aids crisis has a controversial history. A scandal in central China, in which it is believed hundreds of thousands of farmers were infected through unsafe blood-selling practices, was covered up in the Nineties. Campaigners who tried to bring it to national attention were beaten and arrested.
When a new national leadership came to power at the end of 2002, it demanded greater openness on the disease and both the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, and President Hu Jintao have been filmed shaking hands with Aids patients.
There are growing problems with intravenous drug use in areas bordering Burma and Central Asia. The government itself yesterday also pointed to low awareness of the issue among China's huge migrant worker population, which includes a thriving sex trade in the new industrial centres of the east coast and along transport routes.
Half the country's intravenous drug users share needles, while in some areas only a third of men using prostitutes use condoms, according to state media.
The official figure for those testing positive for the virus is 650,000. Wan Yanhai, an internationally renowned researcher who has frequently clashed with the authorities on the issue, told The Daily Telegraph the true figures were likely to be much higher.
"People who are at high risk of Aids infection rarely go for government examinations," he said, adding that the government worked on figures obtained by the police and then used unrealistic methods to extrapolate from their test samples. "It's hard to give any credit to their figures."
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Another reason for people not to go there for transplants of organs ripped out of Chinese prisoners while they are still alive.
SHANGHAI, China -- The lopsided male-female ratio in China caused by sex-selection abortions is worsening, pushed up to 120 men for every 100 women, a government newspaper says.
'Nuff said...
We do take them. Look at San Francisco, and the Bay Area.
They're here. And they vote...Democratic, of course. The Party of Illegal Aliens who vote.
And the Repubs, well most of them in power, but not all, but the President is all for illegals being here. Just so we CAN be the minority party, forever.
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