BEIJING, Dec 26 (AFP) - Officials in an area of northeast China's Jilin province not previously recorded as having been affected by HIV/AIDS confirmed that several villages had in fact been heavily hit, state media reported on Friday.
A total of 64 inhabitants of Soudengzhan village and other nearby villages have been diagnosed with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, the China Daily said, citing Liu Baogui, a Jilin disease control official.
He was quoted by the paper as saying only that people had contracted HIV in different ways, without elaborating.
A large number of the official estimate of 840,000 HIV/AIDS patients in China have contracted the disease through unsanitary blood donation stations or tainted blood, with the worst affected areas in central Anhui and Henan provinces. However, international organizations, including the United Nations, believe China's official figure for the number of infections is far too low, suggesting it could rise to 20 million by 2010.
The report in the state media comes almost a month after the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy revealed the AIDS outbreak in this part of the country.
The China Daily denied a claim by the Hong Kong center that more than 300 people might have been infected with HIV in the Soudengzhan area.
Ding Guifang, a resident in the Liujiatun village near Soudengzhan, recently lost her husband to AIDS.
Ding herself has also contracted HIV and is given 650 yuan (78 dollars) a year by the government to buy medicine.
"If the government had given us medicine years earlier, my husband might still be alive today," she told AFP by telephone.
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