WHO urges China to step up fight against Aids, which afflicts half million mainlanders
Agency says China must do more to combat disease that afflicts half a million mainlanders
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 02 December, 2014, 3:57am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 02 December, 2014, 3:57am
Agence France-Presse in Beijing
Chinese aids activists hand out condoms in a subway station in Wuhan, Hubei. Photo: AFP
The World Health Organisation has called on China to act over Aids, amid government figures that show nearly half a million people are living with the disease or its precursor, with hundreds of thousands more thought to be undiagnosed.
Dr Bernhard Schwartlander, the World Health Organisation's representative in China, wrote in an op-ed in the state-run China Daily newspaper yesterday that "there is much more China needs to do" to prevent infection and better help those living with HIV.
"Perhaps most importantly, we must eliminate stigma and discrimination towards people living with HIV, and at-risk populations such as men who have sex with men, sex workers, and injecting drug users," Schwartlander wrote.
"I've seen some of my own colleagues in the medical profession turn patients away because they disapproved of the person's sexual orientation. That is simply unacceptable, and it has to stop."
The op-ed was published on World Aids Day, a day after the National Health and Family Planning Commission said that by the end of October, a total of 497,000 people on the mainland had been diagnosed with HIV/Aids since the country's first case in 1985.
The figure represents an increase from September last year, when 434,000 people on the mainland were known to be living with HIV/Aids. But it was not clear whether the rise was due to an increase in infection, or more cases being diagnosed.
Another 154,000 had died from Aids over the past three decades, the commission said.
The National Centre for Aids/STD Control and Prevention last year estimated that as many as 810,000 people were living with the disease in the country, including those who had not yet been diagnosed, out of a total population of 1.36 billion.
That is a far lower proportion than India, where UNAids says there are more 2 million people living with HIV. More than a quarter of a million HIV-positive people were on antiretroviral treatment in China, UNAids said.
Sexual contact was the most common means of transmission on the mainland, followed by mother-to-baby transmission and drug needle sharing, the national health commission said.
Discrimination against carriers remains an issue at hospitals, workplaces and other establishments across the country, a factor that experts say hampers efforts to diagnose and treat the virus.
