Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - 2 Dec 1995
Since the first case was reported in 1985, 2,594 people have been diagnosed as HIV carriers, the newspaper quoted Health Ministry officials as saying.
Of the total, 80 have developed AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) and 50 have died.
Experts say insufficient reporting and misdiagnoses mean the real number of Chinese infected with HIV could be as high as 100,000.
Health Minister Chen Minzhang has warned that AIDS seriously threatens the world's most populous nation with 1.2 billion people, driving home the folly of regarding AIDS as a "foreigners' disease."
State media this year abandoned their puritanical socialist-era caution to launch a bold and unprecedented public education drive.
A television documentary last month broke media taboos by interviewing Chinese AIDS patients, prostitutes and drug addicts to send a message the public has never heard -- that AIDS is a Chinese scourge, too.
"China is entering a period of rapid escalation of AIDS cases," the documentary said. "We must neither be afraid nor turn away."
Prostitution and drug abuse are to blame for the soaring AIDS cases, Chinese officials have said.
Chinese officials have warned that the tiny number of AIDS cases could quadruple in the next decade through HIV contamination of the largely unscreened blood supply.
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