The Associated Press -Saturday, November 9, 1996.
Didi Kirsten Tatlow, Associated Press Writer

"Satisfactory control of HIV is still not possible," said Zhang Konglai, director of the Beijing-based China AIDS Network. "It is very probable that, in the foreseeable future, an HIV epidemic is to occur within the country."

Zhang, a member of China's National Expert Committee on AIDS Control and professor of epidemiology at the Beijing Union Medical College, spoke Friday at the first Hong Kong AIDS conference, which closed today.

HIV infection and AIDS no longer can be thought of in China as foreigners' afflictions, he said. While the rate of HIV infection in China was low compared to international levels, it has become "increasingly significant," he said.

China officially reports that just 4,305 Chinese are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, while Zhang said the real figure was between 50,000 and 100,000.

Of the six people who contracted HIV through infected blood or blood products, one has developed full-blown AIDS, Zhang said.

China's blood system is at risk because it must offer money to entice people to donate blood. The system attracts drug addicts and prostitutes, who engage in behavior that makes them vulnerable to AIDS.

HIV had been found in professional blood donors in several provinces and the government was "deeply concerned," Zhang said.

The problem was aggravated by the fact that most hospitals outside big urban centers reuse syringes, a practice that can spread infection.

Nationwide, more than 90 percent of syringes were reused, he said.

The presence of HIV in national blood supplies meant an "explosive rise in HIV infection in rural areas may possibly occur," he said. More than two-thirds of China's population lives in the countryside.

The biggest concentration of HIV infection was in the country's southwest Yunnan province, where intravenous drug use was relatively high.

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