HONG KONG - HIV infections jumped 8-fold over the past few years in parts of China among gay and bisexual men, according to new data from southern China.
Published in Nature, the study found that the proportion of HIV-positive women of child-bearing age doubled in the past 10 years and researchers warned the disease was moving from high-risk communities into the wider population.
There were an estimated 700,000 HIV/AIDS cases in China as of October 2007, up 8 percent compared to 2006, it said. Some 38 percent of cases were attributed to heterosexual contact, more than triple the 11 percent in 2005.
Cases among gay and bisexual men jumped to 3.3 percent in 2007 from 0.4 percent in 2005.
Women now make up 35 percent of those infected in Yunnan, from 7.1 percent before 1996.
"HIV/AIDS is spreading beyond the high risk populations, largely due to increased transmission through sexual contact. It implies that HIV/AIDS is not only a disease that affects high risk population, but the general population alike," professor Zhang Linqi, director of the AIDS Research Center in Beijing, wrote in an email reply to questions from Reuters.
[AIDSPortal summary]
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News Date:
1 October 2008
Contributed On:
5 October 2008