BEIJING, Dec 1 (AFP) - China brought its rapidly spiralling AIDS crisis into the spotlight Sunday on World AIDS Day as experts warned an epidemic of the disease could jeopardise the country's economic growth.
Speaking on the sidelines of a government-backed event to mark the day, United Nations officials applauded China for making progress in the past two years -- from finally admitting it has a problem with HIV/AIDS to releasing more realistic estimates of the number of sufferers and raising awareness.
But HIV infection rates continue to soar and much more needs to be done, they warned.
"At the moment we know the epidemic is still growing very quickly and it will continue," said Rodney Hatfield, the Thailand-based deputy regional director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
"The biggest thing is for everyone to accept this is a major problem that can actually, eventually, if not handled properly, interrupt China's economic growth."
China risks not only an economic decline but could see a complete reversal of social gains made over the past few years such as progress in reducing child mortality, as some African countries have experienced, Hatfield said.
The world's most populous country, which has been criticized for failing to properly respond to a spiralling HIV crisis, marked Sunday's World AIDS Day with awareness-building events in 13 cities.
In a ceremony inside the Great Hall of the People -- in the political center of Beijing -- officials announced it will send one million student volunteers to China's countryside in the next year to educate farming communities on how to prevent HIV/AIDS and not to discriminate against sufferers.
Nearly 80 percent of all Chinese with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, live in the countryside, the China Youth Daily reported Sunday.
Inside the Great Hall, the audience of 450 university students heard experts say ignorance causes HIV to spread faster.
In a sign government attitudes are becoming more open, two AIDS sufferers were allowed to speak to the audience, marking the first time AIDS patients have made a public address in the important meeting hall.
Television celebrity Pu Cunxin hugged the two men and shook their hands, sending a message to people that the disease cannot be spread through simple contact and that they should not be prejudiced against people with the virus.
Also Saturday, 1,000 villagers from the outskirts of Beijing gathered to watch the premier of a television documentary on HIV/AIDS prevention, which will be aired nationwide to half the country's 1.3 billion people, the official Xinhua news agency said.
But in an indication the government is still reluctant to openly address the issue, the two AIDS patients Sunday did not tell the audience they contracted the disease from selling their blood, as many poor farmers in central China's Henan province did in the early 1990s.
The blood collection stations, which used unsanitary methods, were for a long time condoned by the government.
And while state media recently reported what individual cities were doing to raise awareness, there has been very little reporting on the problems, including the growing number of children orphaned by AIDS in China's "AIDS villages," where blood-selling was common.
Experts estimate there will be 200,000 orphans in Henan province alone, where many couples sold blood to boost their meager income.
Instead, Xinhua released a long feature on AIDS orphans in Africa.
One of the AIDS patients said many farmers in his village of Shaanxi do not know they carry the HIV virus.
"They don't get tested because it's no use. They don't have money to pay for medicine," said the man, before a state-run hospital nurse who brought him to the event discouraged him from speaking.
Beijing-based UNICEF senior project officer Ray Yip said what the government is doing so far, such as bringing out AIDS patients, showed a marked improvement in attitudes, but it must do a lot more and fast.
China has about three years to contain the spread of the disease, he said.
The UN recently warned China was on the brink of an "AIDS nightmare."
In what is widely considered an underestimation of the extent of the problem, China has acknowledged one million cases of AIDS and HIV, up from 600,000 last year.
The UN suggested, however, that the number of Chinese infected with HIV could soar from an estimated 1.5 million to more than 10 million by the end of the decade.
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