BEIJING, May 24 (AFP) - The United Nations' top official on HIV/AIDS Monday urged China to act immediately to defuse a "timebomb" with the country's number of new infections doubling in two years.
Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, also warned the problem was likely to spread from China's rural areas to its booming cities.
"There is a fantastic opportunity to avert a major epidemic, (but) I think it's a timebomb ticking, particularly because this epidemic arrives at a moment of great transformation of Chinese society," Piot told AFP in an interview.
Up to now, China's HIV/AIDS epidemic has been mostly concentrated in the poorest and most marginalized populations such as farmers in central provinces who had to sell blood to make a living, or drug addicts in southwest Yunnan province.
But Piot warned it threatens to spread to the general population, especially in more prosperous provinces.
"I think it's most probable that in those provinces where they are the engines of economic development, that we will see the most AIDS," Piot said on an annual visit to China.
"Entrepreneurs, people who are into business and will take risks, they are also sexual risk-takers -- more mobility, opportunities for sex. ... the same people who are the engines for economic development, they're the ones who are most at risk for AIDS."
Although the total number of infected in China -- 840,000 according to widely questioned official estimates -- is small compared to the population, the situation was "serious" because of the rapid rise in infections, Piot said.
The number of new cases that were reported last year doubled to 21,000 from 10,000 in 2002, he said.
"Just like the economy is the highest growth of GDP, well it's one of the highest growth of HIV infection. The doubling of the number of diagnosed cases, not too many countries have that," Piot said.
He urged China to learn from Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam where a small number of infections quickly spread to the rest of the country.
"It's act now or pay later," Piot warned.
"The longer one waits, the more expensive it is, the more people will die, the more complicated it becomes to contain the epidemic, so the top priority should really be preventing the 99.9 percent of Chinese who are not infected from becoming infected."
Pockets of China already have some of the highest infection rates worldwide.
Up to 70 percent of intravenous drug users are HIV positive in parts of northwestern Xinjiang region while almost every family in some villages in central Henan province, where blood-selling occurred, have AIDS.
In the past six months, Piot said he sensed a positive change in the Chinese government's approach towards AIDS.
China's Health Minister Wu Yi demanded local officials fully report cases and threatened to punish those who do not, which could lead to more provinces cooperating and more reliable statistics in the next two years, Piot said.
Instead of focusing only on repressing drug use and prostitution, police now agreed efforts should also be made to promote clean needle and condom use, said Piot, who met with senior officers and was scheduled to meet with Wu.
However, inaction by local governments and "enormous stigma and discrimination" in Chinese society against HIV/AIDS will impede efforts to increase public awareness to prevent further infections, Piot said.
"Not every province is taking this on as seriously as it should be," Piot said.
Education in schools remains "extremely limited," the mass media is not aggressive in promoting awareness and AIDS sufferers are almost never shown on TV.
"It's a problem without a face," he said. "... as long as that's the case, it'll be far more difficult to make people believe that AIDS is there."
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