Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - December 7, 2004
China has said for more than a year that 840,000 people in the country are HIV-positive and 80,000 have developed AIDS . Those figures haven't changed, even as a chorus of international AIDS experts have said the true numbers could be far higher.
"The official figures must be wrong," said Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS , Tuberculosis and Malaria.
After years of denying that AIDS was a problem, China has launched efforts over the past 18 months that include promises of free testing and treatment for the poor and public education campaigns.
"I have been very pleased to learn about the rapid scaling-up of the response to HIV-AIDS in China which has been occurring over the past two years," Feachem said at a news conference.
Despite its disease-fighting efforts, the communist government still harasses activists who agitate for better measures, and state media are allowed to report only statistics that the government has already acknowledged.
The United Nations has warned that 10 million people could be infected in China by 2010 without better prevention.
Feachem, who was in Beijing to meet with health officials, said "the HIV-AIDS epidemic in China is growing rapidly."
"There can be no chance at all that the HIV-AIDS epidemic is remaining the same," he said. "That is absolutely not possible."
Chinese Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu defended the government's figures, saying they were based on a "randomized sampling method" conducted in 2003.
"We cannot say we will conduct this survey every year," Huang said at the news conference. He said the health ministry doesn't have enough staff.
The Global Fund is spending US$270 million in China over five years to fight AIDS , tuberculosis and malaria.
China is committed to match at least 20% of that spending, Huang said. He said that in addition, it will give the fund US$10 million over five years.
-Edited by George Bernard
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