BEIJING, April 20 (AFP) - China's economic growth has brought a health transition in which non-communicable diseases such as cancer are emerging as top killers thanks to triumphs over poverty-linked illness, but HIV/AIDS is still a threat, the head of the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
Lee Jong-wook, the WHO's director general, said China has made "remarkable" progress in improving health over the last 50 years and life expectancy has now reached 71, similar to that of many more economically developed countries.
"With increased life expectancy comes the health transition, in which communicable diseases are replaced by non-communicable ones as the dominant cause of death," said Lee, who is on a two-day visit.
In 2002, there were 10 million deaths in China from all causes.
Of these, seven million were due to chronic, non-infectious diseases, particularly stroke and cancer, Lee said in a speech at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences at the Peking Union Medical College.
Tobacco consumption, unhealthy diets and lack of exercise have become major risks to public health in China, Lee said, urging the problems be addressed before they become overwhelming.
"These and other risk factors for chronic diseases are still in an early stage of development in China," said Lee.
"Investment in preventing these diseases will be less costly if it is done now rather than left till later ..."
Another one million people died from injuries, Lee said, highlighting traffic accidents as a major cause.
On the whole China, the world's most populous country, was achieving targets on tackling poverty and hunger, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, Lee said, but it was not meeting targets on fighting tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
China's goal is to detect 70 percent of the estimated number of TB cases, but by the end of 2003 it was still only detecting 39 percent, Lee said.
One of the problems was China has a "very high" rate of drug-resistant TB, affecting 40 percent of people with the disease, he said.
"The main cause is inadequate or inappropriate treatment of TB patients," Lee said. "This is a problem in urgent need of attention."
For HIV/AIDS, the number of people in China was increasing rapidly. The government says there are an estimated 840,000 people living with HIV/AIDS.
"This number could become 10 million by 2010 unless decisive action is taken now," Lee warned.
On Monday, the China Daily quoted a Chinese official saying preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS has become "one of the most significant" human rights tasks in China.
Some 53.6 percent of China's carriers are aged between 20 and 29, said Yang Zhengquan, vice president of the China Foundation for Human Rights Development.
If the number of cases was allowed to rise to 12 million, China would suffer GDP losses of as much as 40 billion yuan (4.82 billion dollars), he added.
In a candid admission, China's vice health minister Gao Qiang told Lee the biggest problem for China was that the medicine the government began providing for free last summer to thousands of poor farmers who got HIV/AIDS from selling blood was not effective enough.
The drugs used are older and less effective versions of anti-retroviral therapy whose patents have expired, the only kind of treatment China can afford to give, health officials have told AFP.
As many as 20 percent of patients have stopped taking the medicine due to severe side-effects.
Lee also said that while China succeeded in controlling the deadly respiratory disease SARS, which spread from China to more than 30 countries beginning late 2002, SARS and bird flu remain "major issues."
"Unfinished tasks include clarifying the origin and epidemiology of the infection and finding an effective treatment and vaccine," he said.
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